Lunar Lasers

Two different articles about building lasers (well, lasers and a maser perhaps) on the moon. Reuters has a story about a potential lunar power plant, creating electricity with solar panels and beaming it to Earth with microwaves. Space.com has a piece about building a sort of super-sized Star Wars program on the Moon, giant lasers set up to blast incoming space debris and not, of course, anyone here on Earth.

Comments

Why bother?

[shaunak]

Does it not seem better to build solar arrays in the deserts near the equator (max sunlight) and have the energy transported through a smaller distance than from the moon?
And why is this news for nerds?

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why is this news for nerds?

Yeah, only jocks discuss lasers on the moon. Us nerds should stick to talking about football and women and beer.

Re:Why bother?

[blosscore]

The moon has not atmosphere silly, so the rays coming from the sun are not deflected by anything so that solar panels will be able to absorb more light than they would just about anywhere on earth.

Re:Why bother?

[pete-classic]

Does it not seem better to build solar arrays in the deserts near the equator (max sunlight) and have the energy transported through a smaller distance than from the moon?

Of course we have a little thing in the way called an atmosphere.

And why is this news for nerds?

Uh, lasers, space, science (sci-fi-like at that). I'm not sure what could be nerdier.

-Peter

Re:Why bother?

[Deagol]

I heard on public radio that with current technology, we can power the entire planet's electrical needs with a 200x200 mile area. Sorry, I can't locate a source to back me up.

The big problem with solar power is its real-time-ness and storage/transmission. For small apps (like home power -- which I plan to impliment myself some day) it's easy with batteries. Howwver, I can't fathom a multi-megawatt-hour battery array!

Re:Why bother?

[czardonic]

The big problem with solar power is its real-time-ness and storage/transmission. For small apps (like home power -- which I plan to impliment myself some day) it's easy with batteries. Howwver, I can't fathom a multi-megawatt-hour battery array!

Fly-wheels, man. They'd store it with fly-wheels.

Re:Why bother?

[pete-classic]

Well, I'm not scientist, but I think that it is possible.

Clearly it wouldn't be practical with a chemical type (lead-acid or whatever) battery. Just off of the top of my head, what if you use the energy to heat multi-ton blocks of iron to several hundred degrees? You could boil water to drive a steam generator for days between "charges".

-Peter

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't they just store the power by speeding up the Earth's rotation? That's one damn big flywheel!

Re:Why bother?

[jandrese]

Do you have any idea how big a 200x200 mile area is? For comparison, the State of West Virginia has an area of about 24,087 square miles. You are looking at creating a solar array that is 20,000 square miles in size. Where are you going to put this monster? How are you going to clean it? Who's going to pay for the solar cells. If you are using the normal 12% efficent cells (because they are much cheaper), then this whole array is going to cost $91,929,436,402,366US. For comparison, the current US GDP is around $10,229,700,000,000US. Oh, and those solar cells only last about 20 years, so you'll have to keep replacing them. This alos doesn't touch on the current US silicon production capacity vs. what you would need to build this.

On the other hand, my back of the evelope calculation suggests that on a bright sunny day (1000 watts/m^2 of energy hitting the surface) these solar cells could power pretty much the whole world (ignoring transmission loss of course).

Re:Why bother?

[hoggoth]

> Of course we have a little thing in the way called an atmosphere.

Yeah, everyone knows SUNLIGHT can't make it through our atmosphere.

The article states that the maser beam's power would be roughly 20% of sunlight. Therefore a solar array sitting on the ground working at 20% efficiency would be able to collect the same amount. A series of them at various equatorial points around the Earth would be able to collect at all times.

Re:Why bother?

[jandrese]

Sorry, typo. You are not looking to create a solar array smaller than WV at 20,000 miles square, you are looking to create one that is much larger at 40,000 miles square, or about the size of Ohio.

Re:Why bother?

[NanoGator]

Many many nerds were having to go through rolling blackouts in California. Reason? The climate made it diffucult to generate sufficient power.

The moon has very little to alter the climate. There is no atmosphere to speak of, so there are no storms. Because of this it would be really predictable. Nasa (or whoever would construct this...) would be able to say "the moon gets this much light this day, and this much light that day..." and be pretty reliable in their estimates.

Hypothetically, a power generation plant on the Moon would be virtually free of interferance factors like the west coast had over the last year. What does that mean for you as a nerd? It means that rolling blackouts could be a thing of the past. It also means that your power-requiring fate would be less affected by drastic changes in climate.

Re:Why bother?

[pete-classic]

Some (most?) sunlight makes it through. A much lower percentage of solar radiation (less than half?) makes it through.

So, would you rather have twenty percent of a little or a lot?

-Peter

Re:Why bother?

[jandrese]

Oh, I just realized how US-centric my post is. For everybody out there with a world map instead of a US map, 40000 square miles is about the size of Montenegro.

Re:Why bother?

[YanIsa]

Hah! They wish.

Montenegro is 5,332 sq miles in size.

I suppose using orbital mirrors is out of the question because of orbital congestion and all the hammers and stuff flying around? I wonder how big the microwave beam would be upon reaching Earth..

Yan

Re:Why bother?

[Deagol]

Wouldn't that be 40,000? ;-)

Anyway, the suggestion was using nuclear testing grounds wastelands in Nevada. Can't inhabit most of it, and the solar pannels wouldn't care.

And if you read Home Power magazine and frequent simialr discussion groups, you'd find that pannels often far exceed a 20-year life span.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microwave are better able to penetrate the atmosphere and clouds better visible light. With this proposed method one could have solar power even on a cloudy day.

Re:Why bother?

[Wolfger]

Not to mention the fact that one side of the moon faces the sun at all times! Any solar collectors on Earth are subject to day/night cycles. The moon would rarely be impacted, when the lunar eclipses happen.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

orbiting solar satellites beaming
microwave energy to earth has been
discussed for quite awhile, I remember
reading about it in the 80's, locating
it on the moon would perhaps reduce
its vulnerability to attack, if it
was an offensive weapon instead of an
energy source. James P Hogan covered
an interesting scenario for a beam
weapon on this moon in an ancient
arms race in the "gentle giants of ganymede".
Cool book. However, I'd hate to fly
a cessna through that beam, "is it hot
in here or is just me?? phiift"

Re:Why bother?

[jandrese]

This is what I get for not Clicking through the links. Anyway, subsitute Guatemala and everybody should get a good size comparision.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

#1. We don't even use wind or solar power as heavily as we could be now. Maybe we ought to try harder to use what we get on earth before we start placing horribly expensive power plants on the yet-pure lunar surface.

#2. You still face risk factors like meteors impacting at the plant - no atmosphere means no burn-up.

#3. Wouldn't a satellite be better still? The moon goes through phases, but a satellite could do a better job of remaining in the sun. ALSO, the movement of the moon means you won't always have a central point to which to send the power via microwaves, while satellites can be made to "hover" in a relative sense over a spot on the earth, like our tv satellites do now.

#4. What if this blasted contraption misfires? Anyone here seen Robocop? There an "orbital peace platform" or some darn thing misfired, killing a lot of people. While that was science fiction, it could come true if a space power plant suddenly starts beaming microwaves at cities due to some kind of fluke.

Re:Why bother?

[Rand Race]

Actually, the moon does have an atmosphere. While it is very thin, about a billionth of the terran atmosphere's density, it extends over 5000 miles up from the lunar surface (as compared with about 70 miles for the earth's). But you are correct in that the effects of the lunar atmosphere are quite minimal. Orbital stations are still a better option IMHO, they have far less particulate interference than even a moon based collector, a far shorter transmission distance, and can spend far more time in direct sunlight.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's news for nerds because it's interesting technology. fuck you linux-head.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

And at 1/3 the gravity you could jump pretty far and pretty high. Until you acclimated to lunar gravity anyways. I still say we should colonize the moon. It might not be 'cheap' but real estate value is cheap, there is never a cloud in the sky (just an occasional earth) so solar power is pretty reliable. The rocks even have oxygen trapped inside. And even if you suck at golf you can hit for hundreds of yards (if you're good you might even get a low lunar orbit ;)

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

The side lobes of any microwave transmission to the earth would essentially cook anything within about twice the area of the main beam. This idea was introduced about 20 years ago using geosyncronous orbiting satellites to collect the energy and then beam it to rectifying antenna on the earth. The idea was thrown out then because of the inefficency of of solar collectors, the dangerous side lobe effects (not to mention airplanes flying through the beam), and, the political issues involved around ownership of the orbital space above 3rd world countries. I couldn't imagine the ownership issues we'd face concerning property on the moon.

Re:Why bother?

[Glytch]

I hope you're just trolling, because if you're being honest...

Re:Why bother?

[Pampaluz]

>Not to mention the fact that one side of the
>moon faces the sun at all times! Any solar
>collectors on Earth are subject to day/night
>cycles. The moon would rarely be impacted, when
>the lunar eclipses happen.

Doh! One side of the moon always faces the EARTH! (synchronous rotation). We had never seen the far side of the moon until we sent something "back there" to take pictures.

So: that being the case, is it really possible that one side of the moon is always bathed in the light of the sun? If so, then how did we ever get visible pictures of the OTHER SIDE of the moon? Did we use a gigantic flashbulb, or something? ;)

Map of the entire surface including the far side

The Far Side of the Moon Consider how this picture would look if it had been taken during a "full moon:" since during a full moon the entire side of the moon that is facing the Earth is lit up, only the portion of the moon in this photograph that is said to be visible from Earth (see the pic's caption) would have any sunlight on it.

Far Side of the Moon, with animation showing the same side of the moon always toward the Earth. This doesn't show where the sun is in relation to the animation; but figure that the sun is way off the screen from the animation...the darkened part of the moon in the animation is representing the side of the moon we never see from Earth, NOT how the light hits the moon (the Earth does not illuminate the moon, although it does sometimes reflect a little of the sun's light onto the dark portion of the quarter moon...)

So, taking this into account, will it be useful to build these lasers on the moon, especially the power plant?

Apollo 11 Laser Ranging Retroreflector Experiment. "Laser beams are used because they remain tightly focused for large distances. Nevertheless, there is enough dispersion of the beam that it is about 7 kilometers in diameter when it reaches the Moon and 20 kilometers in diameter when it returns to Earth. Because of this very weak signal, observations are made for several hours at a time. By averaging the signal for this period, the distance to the Moon can be measured to an accuracy of about 3 centimeters (the average distance from the Earth to the Moon is about 385,000 kilometers)."

Add to this, the fact that the moon wobbles...

Ah yes, here's a thought... ;)

Re:Why bother?

[Wolfger]

Err... uhm... I was suffering a lack of caffiene yesterday! That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!
I knew better. Really I did. For some reason, by brain did not engage before, during, or after my post. My deepest apologies to anybody misfortunate enough to have actually believed me.

Re:Why bother?

[NanoGator]

I think the rest of your points were valid, but I just wanted to respond to this one:

"#1. We don't even use wind or solar power as heavily as we could be now. Maybe we ought to try harder to use what we get on earth before we start placing horribly expensive power plants on the yet-pure lunar surface"

Wind power is very inefficient. I don't know how it compares to solar power on the surface of the Earth, but I can tell you that wind power is very low power compared to alternatives like hydro-powered turbines.

I believe the moon to be a more efficient place for generating solar power because it is unshielded and they'd be able to get raw solar energy from it. Here its filtered.

Here's a thought: Put a huge nuclear powerplant on the moon and beam the energy down, if it blows up nobody on Earth would be harmed. (in theory anyway)

Re:Why bother?

[leucadiadude]

"Reason? The climate made it diffucult to generate sufficient power."

The climate had very little to do with amount of power generated. Much larger factors were numbers and specific locations (on the grid) of generating stations out of service. I won't get into the reasons for why these plants were out of service except to say the climate had nothing to do with it, profiteering and unscheduled maintenance outages were the major factors. That and having to many plants in one region out of service with limited ability to move power into those areas from elsewhere (NIMBY on transmission lines).

The only possible climate interactions would be contributing to overheating transmission lines with consequent "sag", and higher temps would reduce typical steam plant outputs by up to 2%.

Climate changes affect the load, not the generation. Your lunar genreation plant would maybe have a nice predictable output, but you would have still have had the same problems with rolling blackouts because of climate effects on load requirements.

Re:Why bother?

[NanoGator]

I beg to differ. Climate affects solar AND wind energy. The west coast goes through a drought: not enough power to meet demand. This isn't because the population suddenly increased 200%, it's because there wasn't enough water turning the hyrdo turbines that provide a good chunk of the power for California and Oregon.

If the sun's not out, you don't get as much solar power. If the wind isn't blowing, you don't get as much wind power. Coal plants work just fine, as you have stated. But the change in climate for the northwest created a real problem for us over here.

Re:Why bother?

[leucadiadude]

Drought does affect hydro. I agree with you there. But your post had the sound of a "day to day" climate effect and for a drought to affect hydro it is many months if not a couple of years in the making.

Yes a significant percentage comes from hydro from BPA, but day to day changes in climate still only affect load. If a long term drought is in progress, it won't matter what the day to day changes are, if there isn't enough hydro to import from WA, there will be a shortage. Even if the day to day climate is most favorable (not to hot to actuate AC and not to cold to suck up cheap natural gas supplies).

California generates nearly all it's power from natural gas or oil fired power plants, a sizeable chunk from coal and nuclear. BTW, all the wind/solar generation in the western US is dwarfed by only one unit of the nuclear plant where I work. The largest solar plant in the world is only 80MW, and it is several times larger than it's next largest rival. Consequently wind farms and solar plants are irrelevant (for the foreseeable future anyway) to this discussion.

One errant zap

[Anonymous Coward]

And there goes many billions of dollars turned into ISS toast.

Moon-based laser? No thanks.

Pen-laser? Yes please!

Re:One errant zap

[Anonymous Coward]

this is why we should yous a long wire

BSOD

[thetechweenie]

Sorry sir, we had a BSOD on the Laser Station, and it just zapped an extra 10 miles stretch for the Grand Canyon...

What OS would this run on? I hope NOT anything M$. I can already see it on the news. "Giant laser from the moon zapps 1,100 people. Could it happen in the Bay State, tonight at 11".

Re:BSOD

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, first mention of the BSOD on usenet can be found here

Re:BSOD

[Chris Burke]

No, you wouldn't see that on the news, because this "security vulnerability" (MS' future classification of all bugs) is not allowed to be disclosed until MS develops a fix for it and a suitable press release -- something along the lines of "Superhero Microsoft saves lives with laser software upgrade, and also increases the chocolate ration to 5 grams."

Re:BSOD

[sketerpot]

NASA is much smarter than that. Their software for the space shuttle, for instance, was developed by a bunch of NASA programmers who went over their work exhaustively, where any error could be fatal. They were so cautious that they used four redundant processors in case three failed. They would NEVER entrust a giant moon laser to Microsoft.

Believe me, with NASA's funding problems, they do NOT want a software bug to screw up their chance at glory rivalling the Apollo program. Sorry MS...

Re:BSOD

[gunnk]

NASA? Aren't you talking about the programmers that lost a Mars probe becaused they mixed Metric and US measurements in the navigation system?

Feet? Meters? What's the difference???

Re:BSOD

[Anonymous Coward]

This is obviously a clumsy hoax. That guy is talking about installing software on a Macintosh. We all know that Windows is only capable of running on x86 hardware.


To get back on topic, it goes without saying that the Confederation of mad scientists and allied trades is highly in favor of a SECRET MOONBASE with GIANT LASERS.

Re:BSOD

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's talking about installing a Macintosh service, netatalk for NT I would guess.

Re:BSOD

[digitalmuse]

try again troll-boy, the post states:
"I recently installed NTAS on a 486DX2/66 over a previous installation of the release version of NT..."
"After a successful installation, I proceeded to add TCP/IP, FTP server, and Services for Macintosh. NTAS would reach the login dialog, then die the blue screen death. After some experimentation, I determined that Services for Macintosh was conflicting with the 3COM Elnk16 ethernet card..."

I think that it would be rather obvious that he is in fact working on a BSOD-capable platform. The 'macintosh' here is simply the 'Services for Macintosh' component, which at the time was known to be buggy as hell.
Check your facts or go home...

Re:BSOD

[Anonymous Coward]

then used the same line for errors as data, with no error checking, ohh and ofton forget metric or not...

Microwave

[Apreche]

Exactly how does microwaving electricity work? I mean You have a powerplant on the moon. That powerplant zaps a zillion microwaves that the earth. What is exactly involved in catching them and turning them into electricity? Don't tell me they boil water and spin turbines. And what if they miss, like in sim city 2000. Big boom!

Re:Microwave

[gandalf_grey]

Well, you can't just string high-tension wires from here to the moon (not easily anyways). So, instead 1) Take the sunlight, convert it to electricity, 2) Convert that electricy to microwaves so they can be transmitted (in a focused beam) across space to Earth, 3) Collect those microwaves in a collector dish, and convert them to, oh let's say heat, 4) Convert that heat to electricity (like in a coal powered power plant), but much more environmentally friendly.

AND NO, we would not irradiate or cook the Earth.

Re:Microwave

[mbessey]

Microwaves are easy to recieve - you simply stretch out a wire between two insulated poles, and the power just flows. That's the big advantage of microwaves over other power transmission possibilities.

Granted, given the spill-over from the "concentrated" beam of microwaves, you'll probably have to use some frequency that's not very popular for communication, but it's probably do-able.

The people who are worried about power-line emissions would probably go insane over this, though - the exposure levels would be MUCH higher.

-Mark

Re:Microwave

[CoolVibe]

I think microwaving the earth from the moon is not going to work. There are too many disturbances and obstacles in outer space itself. There's background radiation, solar winds, x-rays, the earth magnetic field, and all that is going to seriously fsck up the transmission. I know it was Tesla's dream to transfer energy wirelessly, but this would probably put him in a hissy laughter fit... OTOH, imagine a Tesla coil that could send arcs of electricity to the earth... Yikes... (yeah, I know that's physicly impossible, but just _imagine_)

Nah, better would be if they used the generated electricity for the lunar infrastructure.

The laser thing bothers me a bit. Who says that one couldn't point such a thing towards the earth to blast stuff out of existance?

Re:Microwave

[PsychoKiller]

POWERreceived = POWERtransmitted + TXgain + RXgain - line loss - multipath loss - pathloss - some other things

I think microwave is just the most convenient to transmit because the power isn't attenuated by our atmosphere as much.

Think back to the old crystl radio sets, where there were no batteries, the only thing power the earpiece was the received radio signal. This is on a much larger scale.

Re:Microwave

[scott1853]

NASA would surely be in charge of it and they never miss.

Re:Microwave

[GileadGreene]

Yet somehow they manage to get radio signals back from the moon. Seems like maybe all that crap you mentioned doesn't actually interfere with RF transmissions (including microwaves) as much as you seem to think it does.

Microwave power transmission conceptual designs typically consider RF frequencies not dissimilar to those used for space comm applications (power transmission has been proposed at ~2.5GHz). See this for more info.

Re:Microwave

[CoolVibe]

Hmm.. I guess you're right. Ah well... I stand corrected.

Heck, I learn something new every day :-)

Re:Microwave

[KernelHappy]

They think power lines are bad? I can just imagine the cancer cluster surrounding the receiving station.

As far as cooking the earth, I'm not suggesting that it would burn the whole planet, but think about the starving families we could feed by pointing it in the middle of the ocean and boiling up a whole bunch of seafood. Send a couple boats out there to skim the surface after its done, then just pack on ice with cocktail or tartar sauce.

Re:Microwave

[hardburn]

Wouldn't it be problematic that the entire moon (on the Earth side) is only uncovered for about a week at a time? If you're going to go to all the trouble of setting up a big power plant on the moon, I'd like to see it producing near capacity all the time. Anybody know how light it is on the side of the moon we never see (except in fuzzy Solviet pictures)?

Re:Microwave

[GileadGreene]

Gracious admission of error. Are you sure you're a slashdotter? :-)

Re:Microwave

[xtp]

High-power microwaves, e.g. radar transmitters,
are known to cause inoperable cataracts.
This was well-understood 30 years ago.

x-rays caused by high power high-frequency
emissions can cause cancer. Old color-TV sets
and medical x-rays are good examples. Cancer
incidence among x-ray technicians remains higher
than the norm.

Low-frequency power line emissions at any power
level have yet to be associated with confirmed medical evidence although the medical community
and legal community have been looking for several
years.

Microwave power transmission has the potential
for disaster.

Re:Microwave

[F.Prefect]

The people who are worried about power-line emissions would probably go insane over this

Except that the sorts of people who worry about power-line emissions are already insane.

Re:Microwave

[barawn]

X-rays cause cancer due to a higher energy and shorter wavelength. They have rather powerful penetration depths (duh, otherwise they wouldn't be used in medical research). Microwaves don't have that problem (otherwise they wouldn't use them in cell phones/telephones - what do you think a 1.2GHz phone is?)

Microwaves are perfectly safe, in normal intensities, and since they don't refract, you don't have a worry about it spreading past the area you intend it to hit. They can't affect anything smaller than their wavelength, obviously, so you don't have the danger that X-rays have.

People are bombarded with radiation every day, and this wouldn't change anything, really. You're much more at risk from that giant 4 x 10^26 watt light bulb hovering over your head every day. So if you're really worried about these microwave lasers, go hide in a cave.

Re:Microwave

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm.. The phases of the moon are the same if you looked at it from the other side, just reversed. They happen because the Moon rotates relative to the Sun, but not relative to Earth. It's exactly the same as watching Earth from a geostationary satellite.

Re:Microwave

[Anonymous Coward]

there is no dark side of the moon.
it rotates with the earth so you alawys see the same side but when the side you see is dark the side you don't see is light.
This information is found in most any encycopedia.

Re:Microwave

[Anonymous Coward]

Wee'd hav to have a big ass transmitter, too. We (currently) can pump out what about 300k watts out of a tube? That 300k watts sure dosen't seem to justify putting one on the moon...

Re:my first poster

[phoebus1553]

Ya know, all they really have to do is put it somewhere on the dark side of the moon and we'll all be safe ;) Now just as long as some meteors don't get sneaky and try to sneak up on us from behind

hmm.

[raindog151]

i saw this in highlander 2 i think. it didn't work out too good.

Re:hmm.

[CyanDisaster]

Umm...If you watched Highlander 2, you'd know that it was a shield to protect the earth from the lack of the ozone layer. It was destroyed because the corporation didn't want to admit that the ozone layer had regenerated. For some reason, that corporation reminds me of Microsoft...can't imagine why though...

Re:hmm.

[brulman]

you actually watched highlander 2!?!?

Re:hmm.

[drsquare]

No, he didn't. The fact that he knows something about what was in it is pure coincidence.

Star Wars

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of which.. is Lucas behind this move to turn the Moon into the Death Star?

Re:Star Wars

[thetechweenie]

Yes, he's hoping to cut production costs for the third episode. He's thinking that we can just use the sun, instead of those tiny litle models, as Chubacca always tends to crush the model before they finish the scenes...

Actual story? Or...

[Ric0chet]

...a strange social experiment by the /. team to see how many people will come up with the same joke in a given period of time?

Hmmm...

That's no moon....

[drenehtsral]

It's a SPACE STATION!

I need to learn to type more slowly, it wouldn't let me post because my comment took only 14 seconds to type.

Smile bin Laden

[Metox]

"Hey look! Osama's skin is bubbling! Come to think of it, it is getting rather warm here, kind of like the inside of a microwave oven."

Yeah right, the thing would never be used for evil. And monkeys might fly from my posterior!

Tip-o-the-hat to Mr. Michael Myers...

"And we shall call it the 'Alan Parson's Project'"

[scorp1us]

You idiot! Alan Parson's project was a progressive rock band from 1982.

Awfully Reminicent

[Castolari]

This seems to be very similar to the "Microwave" Power Plants from SimCity 2000 et al. Of course it doesn't surprise me that the idea's been bouncing around for a while. Of course, now it begs the question from that game, that of targeting. While seeing a giant beam of orbital energy tear through a virtual city made for some humorous memories and a good hour of urban redesign on my end, I doubt being on the receiving end would be very enjoyable.

Why the moon?

[gandalf_grey]

Why not an orbiting satellite. His quote in the article was: "It's really a very cost-effective proposal".

Why waste all that energy to go to the moon, and only get 14 days out of 28 of sunlight to convert to energy... and beam it half a light-second back to earth? A series of satellites would seem 1) More cost-effective, 2) faster and, 3) would not require a new moon program.

If we had existing infrastructure there... sure. But otherwise it's just a huge waste.

Re:Why the moon?

[FortKnox]

Slashdot already discussed using Satellites in the same scenario (as solar plants beaming microwaves as energy). Which is how I presented this article when they rejected it.

Re:Why the moon?

[envelope]

... would not require a new moon program

Well, I for one would like to see any excuse used to start a new moon program.

I keep waiting for the moon base from Space 1999 to become reality.

Re:Why the moon?

[TGK]

Most conceptions of orbital power stations rely on a mylar baloon of sorts used as a reflecting dish (think a sphere, half clear, half reflective... point the clear end at then sun and you've got a dish... well... kind of anyhow, more an elipse than a sphere)

Anyway, since this is space we're talking about and thus we're working in freefall, the entire collection array can simply be this balloon. This drasiticly cuts costs. Now all you have to do is beam it back.... these can be launched without human beings going up at all.

Re:Why the moon?

[autopr0n]

What does the distance to the moon have to do with anything?

And the reason it would be cheaper is that the moon already has a 'structure' we can build upon. Setting down a square mile of solar cells would be a lot easier then building a square mile rigged structure.

Re:Why the moon?

[gandalf_grey]

Even the best laser/maser loses focus over distance.

Like mail order purchases, it's not the item cost that's the killer, it's the shipping fees. Much cheaper to ship a few satelites into orbit that to ship them to the moon.

Re:Why the moon?

[czardonic]

Setting down a square mile of solar cells would be a lot easier then building a square mile rigged structure.

Really? First of all, in both cases, the structure would have to be built. Second, I would assume that some amuount of landscaping would have to be do to get these things oriented properly, not to mention keeping them oriented. Then there is the distance.

An orbiting structure would be closer, and thus cheaper to build and maintain.

Re:Why the moon?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Yes, but the power beaming antenna would have to be much bigger because the moon is much further away- and the antenna would have to be much more expensive because you have to steer it to point at the right points on earth due to the rotation of the earth; incidentally I've looked into steering mechanisms and whichever way you cut it, its very expensive.

The whole point about geosynchronous orbit is that it doesn't need steering because the satellite doesn't move relative to the earth- that plus the fact it gets twice the sunlight and hence twice the power.

Re:Why the moon?

[KernelHappy]

Keeping them oriented? Last I heard the moon was pretty inert, other than expansion/contraction from heaing and cooling (which would be accounted for in engineering and probably have to be done for a satellite solution) what would take them out of alignment?

Re:Why the moon?

[linzeal]

How much more expensive would a moon "shipment" be than to get something in geosynch orbit? I know all about leaving the earth's gravity well but aren't there other benifits? I mean couldn't this be used by any future colonists of the moon or mining companies?

Re:Why the moon?

[czardonic]

Presumably, they would have to move to maximise efficiency as the moon moves in relation to the sun. Anything that moves will have to be maintained. The more remote the location of said maintenance must take place is, the more difficult.

Re:Why the moon?

[drsquare]

It wouldn't need to be bigger. As long as the rays are sent in a straight line, it makes no difference. It's not like there's any air in the way.

Re:Why the moon?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

>As long as the rays are sent in a straight line, it makes no difference.

Ah but that's the point they don't go in a straight line due to diffraction. Light doesn't go in a straight line, quite.

Light only goes in a straight line when the wavelength is small relative to the size of the emitter. In the case of a dish on the moon, with microwaves, diffraction limits the minimum size dish you can have there and still get a tight beam pattern on the earth.

Ransom

[Anonymous Coward]

I hereby hold the earth hostage for ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

- Dr. Evil.

Re:Ransom

[Anonymous Coward]

Pave the earth
Chrome the moon!! Chrome the damn moon!
For God's sake chrome the f**cking moon!!

hmmm...

[Byteme]

Does this have anything to do with the ABM Treaty of 1972 that the US just backed out on?

Could this be used as a weapon?

Re:hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this be used as a weapon?

If boxcutters, plastic forks, and mail can be used as weapons, then yeah, a big space laser on the moon could too.

OTOH, since the moon's rotational and orbital periods are the same, you can guarantee that it can't be used against the earth by building it on the far side (assuming you don't put any mirrors into orbit over the moon).

Granted, if the stated goal is to blow up near-earth asteroids, you lose some coverage. That can largely be solved by evenly distributing a bunch of stations just a bit over the other side of the lunar horizon. That way the earth isn't in the field of view for any of them, but otherwise they provide maximum coverage of the area around us.

all I wanted was a frickin "Laser"

[jafac]

(insert finger-quotes here)

Re:all I wanted was a frickin "Laser"

[FatRatBastard]

"BZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!

Thank you for playing. Don Pardo, tell 'em what he's going home with."

Nope, the karma cap is a cap. I've had cases where, at 50, I made a post, got modded up to five, then was modded down to 4 and my Mod total was 49. 50 is the hard cap.

Re:all I wanted was a frickin "Laser"

[ncc74656]

Dude, you can get way over 50, its just that 50 is the max it will display. If you get to 50 and then get 20 post modded up, you can then later get 20 post modded down before you risk loosing points. The karma is there, you just don't know it! :)

Um...no. The karma cap is a hard limit. If you're at 50 and your post is modded up, nothing happens. If you're at 50 and your post is modded down, your karma goes down. I had a ton of posts modded up in a row; the first post after those that was modded down dropped my karma to 49.

When you're at 50, the only way to go is down...

Re:all I wanted was a frickin "Laser"

[ethereal]

...which is disappointing - the way it really should work is that it keeps track of karma > 50, but just displays "Karma > 50". So you get the benefit of high karma, but without being able to brag about it.

Re:all I wanted was a frickin "Laser"

[MindStalker]

Shrugs, thats strange I've been stuck at 52 for years now. Once got marked down from 53 to 52 after a string of negative marks. And of course couldn't bring it back up. Shrugs, but it seemed to work that way for me.

Re:all I wanted was a frickin "Laser"

[Chris Burke]

Not that I care, since I never wanted to be at 50 karma anyway. It's just the fact that if you post at /. enough, and don't post like an asshole, you'll get to 50 in short order.

To regain that non-existant thrill of gaining karma, though, i'll have to lose some. So, in the interest of losing karma, I will now say that /. editors Michael and Roblimo are assholes. That should get me some "-1 Redundant" mods, since everyone already knew that. :)

Re:all I wanted was a frickin "Laser"

[jmu1]

I call it the "Alan Parson's Project".

Re:all I wanted was a frickin "Laser"

[jafac]

well, as you can see from my UID#, my account's been around a LONG time, and I used to have a karma of over 400. Didn't take long for it to dwindle to the 45-50 range it's been in for the past two years or so.

Move over Decepticons

[Milican]

I say while you are at it you might as well collect the energy in cubes like the transformers and have Galvitron fly them back to earth. Seriously though, I have to admit that having microwave rays beam the energy back to earth is more than a little disconcerting.

JOhn

Re:Move over Decepticons

[Exatron]

Wouldn't Astrotrain be a better choice for such a task? One of his altmodes is a space shuttle and he doesn't suffer from violent mood swings.

But... but...

[The Night Watchman]

My questions here are, what keeps the power from dissipating over the great distance from earth to the moon, and what happens if the laser/maser misfires? I'd hate to see this turn into some kind of comic-book-style weapon, and chances are, this technology would almost definitely fall into the wrong hands.

Also, why not just build satellites in geosync orbit? If you have enough of them, a constant percentage will get sunlight at all times, and then the power could be beamed between the satellites to the appropriate receiving stations. No sense using the moon, which would require an enormous amount of resources, when we can build something a lot closer to home.

/* Steve */

Re:But... but...

[RFC959]

what keeps the power from dissipating over the great distance from earth to the moon

It's a laser (or maser - same deal). That means the light (or other EM radiation) is coherent. It doesn't diverge, like light from your flashlight. (Theoretically, anyway. Real lasers are slightly imperfect.)

why not just build satellites in geosync orbit?

Yeah, I wondered the same thing. The main difference I can see is that if you put up satellites, you have to get the whole shebang into orbit; if you start from the moon, you can manufacture a lot of the stuff you need on the moon. Less mass to orbit -> cheaper. Also, maintenance on satellites is tricky, whereas a semi-permanent crew on the moon could just walk over.

Re:But... but...

[Spamalamadingdong]

(Hey, no infringing on my subject line!)

Power doesn't just "dissipate". It can be part of a divergent beam, which just gets bigger and bigger, it can be absorbed (converted into e.g. heat) or it can be scattered. In the vacuum of space there is almost nothing to absorb or scatter significant amounts of such a beam, so we're left with divergence. You can keep divergence of a coherent beam to an arbitrarily small amount by making your transmitting antenna larger.

As for building sats in geosync, I agree with you except for the issue of light pollution (but the relay sats required to send power to the half of the earth invisible from the Moon would present the same problem). The real problem is where you get the raw materials for the plants regardless of where they're located. Using near-earth asteroids instead of the moon may be easier and cheaper, avoiding the difficulty of having to work in gravity, at a couple of miles/second delta-V from an earth-return trajectory, and all those other issues. Lunar chauvinism shouldn't blind us to taking the most cost-effective route to the goal.

Re:But... but...

[Mr_Dyqik]

Theroetically, lasers produce a Gaussian beam that has a slight curvature, and therefore a divergence. The action of lenses can move the narrowest point of the beam to outside of the lasing cavity, but the amount of divergence is controlled entirely by the minimum width of the beam. It's the lovely relation, angle of divergence = wavelength / diameter of beam waist
(for sufficiently small angles)

This is identical to the diffraction equation as well (see earlier post on the size of a microwave dish).

Re:But... but...

[Anonymous Coward]

This idea was actually researched about 20 years ago by the US govt. Many issues were uncovered that ultimately caused the idea to go away. A couple of the main killer issues included:
- Side lobes of the main beam
The width of the side lobes for any coherent beam would cause the energy of the waves to be distributed over much too large an area, impossible to find a suitable set of sites on earth, given population density of any region that could even use the power.
- Geosynchronous orbits are very limited and the rights to use them are potentoally owned by the (mostly) 3rd world countries that lie beneath the resource. This is still an open political issue.
- There are several conversion steps necessary in the process, each one adding another inefficiency. Consider the initial conversion from solor energy to DC. Only a small fraction of the energy of the sun will be converted to electricity, even withthe best solar cells known to man. The DC current must then be converted to AC microwave energy (assume 50 GHz), then it must be beamed to an array of rectifying antenna to absorb the energy and convert it to some other frequency, or DC for storage or controlled use.

Re:But... but...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least Chairface can write his name on the moon without being disturbed.

This is a weapon of massless destruction

[KarmaBlackballed]

The power sent as microwaves must be focused into some reasonable area unless they propose having antennas nearly the size of the moon on earth.

1. How will they focus the beam on receptor antenas?

2. How will they keep airplanes from flying across the beams?

3. Will they coordinate with satellite operators so they can avoid the beam too?

The only way for this not to harm you would be for it not to strike you. Early radar technicians learned about microwave cooking standing in front of such beams

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[pclminion]

1. How will they focus the beam on receptor antenas?

By any number of means. Mirrors, lenses, etc. A maser beam will not spread out too much.

2. How will they keep airplanes from flying across the beams?

They probably won't. If the idea really gets off the ground, it wouldn't be hard to equip airplanes with microwave dissipation grids. It'll heat up the grid but the airplane will cross the beam very quickly.

3. Will they coordinate with satellite operators so they can avoid the beam too?

This is the one major problem. The effects would vary depending on what sort of electronics the satellite is carrying.

The only way for this not to harm you would be for it not to strike you.

The article states the beam would have an areal power of about 20% that of sunlight. This is approx. 270 watts per square meter. Pretty strong, but since the microwave beam will be collected, the only way you could be exposed to it would be to stand at the collector.

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[Anonymous Coward]

Criswell is talking about beam densities only 67%
higher than the side scanning radar on the
shuttle. Something like 250 W/m^2. I don't
remember what frequency he is talking, but I
don't think it couples with any of the common
vibrational frequencies in organic matter. It is
something which could be downconverted into
electricity using thin film antenna, which could
easily be placed on roofs everywhere.

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[SysKoll]

Weapon? Calm down. The article talks about a beam that has 20% of the sun's power density, i.e., less than 150 W per square meter. Hardly enough to kill anyone.

Of course, planes should avoid the beam.

But overall, I am skeptical about the project. Not about its feasability of safety (mere engineering problems), but over its economical realism. Why bother going to the moon? If microwave-beamed power production becomes a reality, then a geosynchronous satellite is the obvious answer.

Installing a solar power plant on the moon would make sense only if raw materials could be mined and processed on the moon instead of being lifted off from the Earth's gravity well. Otherwise, installation on the moon would introduce yet another gravity well to overcome each time you have to move something back and forth (and a power plant would require shuttling personnel and material constantly). At least, a stallite doesn't require you to fly rockets back and forth from the moon surface.

-- SysKoll

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[Fenris2001]

Answers to safety questions -

1. Focus - the beam will most likely be a maser, or microwave laser. Given a reasonable size emitter in geosynch or elliptic earth orbit, the footprint on the surface of the planet is only a few kilometers wide, and has an energy density of perhaps ten to a hundred watts per square meter.

2. Guidance - the same way they keep aircraft away from anything else - tell them not to go there. Note that this isn't really a problem, as the metal skin of an aircraft would deflect the beam.

3. Of course they will coordinate with other satellite operators. Although, if some satellite DID accidentally cross the beam path, it wouldn't necessarily be harmed, for the same reasons as 2.

The proposals I've seen for this (including a gov't study in the Sixties), all addressed the safety question. The REAL question is whether or not this can be done ECONOMICALLY - it's no use if the power so produced is ten times more expensive than fossil fuels (though note that such a scheme becomes more attractive as fossil fuels become more expensive...). The most attractive source of building materials for the solar cells and support hardware is not the Earth, but asteriods that cross or come near the orbit of the Earth - they contain all the necessary elements (silicon, iron, hydrogen, carbon, etc.) to make a solar power satellite in orbit, instead of having to haul every component up from the planet.

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[Waffle Iron]

The article talks about a beam that has 20% of the sun's power density, i.e., less than 150 W per square meter.

If this is so, then why bother with this system at all? A direct solar collector on earth could generate nearly as much energy per square meter as the receiver antenna. Even if you needed 5X more solar collector area on earth as microwave receivers due to efficiency, night and clouds, you'd still come out ahead because wouldn't need to pay interest on a trillion dollar lunar infrastructure.

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[doctor_noah_wily]

In response to your questions...

1. How will they focus the beam on receptor antenas?
I'm not gonna pretend I can explain it, but I am gonna pretend I can use google. This is an artice on spacefuture.com written by a boeing engineer.
2. How will they keep airplanes from flying across the beams?
Getting air traffic to steer clear should be a monumentally easy task. Do you realize the amount of "restricted airspace" that already exists? It is simply a matter of designating the land, and getting the air traffic controllers to say "hey, don't go there."

3nd, I have to believe that the fact that there are hundreds of communications sattelites in geosynchronous orbits that don't collide, it wouldn't be excessivly difficult to add one more to the list. Admittedly it would be inconvenient due to the fact that nothing could fly underneath it, but again inconvenient does not mean impossible.

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[hardburn]

The article indicates it would take about three times as much as the budget for the Apollo landings (which was $19 billion). If you take inflation into account, I'd bet it would actually be cheeper than Apollo.

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[WolfWithoutAClause]

IT IS NOT A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION. It is not even a weapon.

The beam only needs as much power/m^2 as a cell phone. You can stand right in it with no ill effects. Birds, aeroplanes can fly/sit through/in it without harm. Even if the beam 'slipped' nobody would notice much; the odd EMC problem is all, but realistically the beam would be switched off before it went anywhere.

Maybe if there was a hundred of them and they were all lined up to point at the same point on earth; but even then a thin layer of silver foil is all that is needed to defend against this extremely unlikely scenario.

Compare this to a microwave oven with 500-1000 per square foot. Turn that power down by 100 times. How warm does your food get?

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[apsmith]

Microwave mesh antenna is a lot cheaper than solar collectors on earth for same area.

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[WolfWithoutAClause]

You can't rely on the solar energy on earth. The whole point about beamed power is that it is 24x7x365.25.

The problem with solar power on earth is that it isn't available at night. Large scale energy storage on earth is exceedingly non trivial; otherwise solar would be used more. In fact solar gives you the most power midday where you often need it the least.

Also, beamed power is available anywhere on earth. I live in the UK; trust me when I tell you that you don't get enough power in winter time from solar (ok, I lie slightly, one guy covered his entire roof, and I mean entire roof with solar panels, at some unspecified cost, probably in the high tens of thousands; he still needs a power grid connection at night; he just about breaks even energy wise, but monetarily- nope.)

Beamed power would actually break-even after about a decade of use, the studies show.

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[WolfWithoutAClause]

One design of a microwave antenna called a rectenna consists of a length of wire, a diode and a capacitor. It costs pence, and delivers 100 watts per square meter, 24x7x365.

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[BluedemonX]

RE: but even then a thin layer of silver foil

So what you're saying is, those wackos walking around with tinfoil on their heads to protect them from "rays from space" got it right?

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Nope. They're wackos. ;-)

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[Verne]

2. Guidance - the same way they keep aircraft away from anything else - tell them not to go there. Note that this isn't really a problem, as the metal skin of an aircraft would deflect the beam.

Oh great. The aircraft will be fine. yay. good for the aircraft...what about the poor sucker on the ground who happens to get a high power microwave beam aimed at him?

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously there havn't been enough posts by some Physics students:

Gaussian optics dictates the behaviour of lasers and masers, etc, and if you do the math, and I have but it was long ago, you find that your "super powerful blastotron laser," over the distance from the earth to the moon spreads out across an area bigger than the moon istelf! - hence dissipating any mass-destructive behaviour.

So use a lens you say. Well to focus a laser beam down to anything worthwile over that distance requires a lens tens of metres across, maybe more, and that's bloody hard to build.

This is why star-wars didn't work, if you put it on the moon and make the distance bigger it only gets worse.

Microwaves have the same problem although I am unclear on the engineering of MASERS...

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[_ph1ux_]

"rectenna"? where do you put it?

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Rectenna is short for rectifying antenna. You put it flat on the ground.

"Not to be taken internally." ;-)

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[mj6798]

Is this some kind of new math? You still need the solar collectors on the moon, and while they may operate a little more efficiently there, they also cost a lot more on the moon.

Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction

[RetsamYthgimla]

3nd, I have to believe that the fact that there are hundreds of communications sattelites in geosynchronous orbits that don't collide, it wouldn't be excessivly difficult to add one more to the list. Admittedly it would be inconvenient due to the fact that nothing could fly underneath it, but again inconvenient does not mean impossible.

Two points:
First, I don't think he was talking just about geosynchronous orbits. I think he meant the thousands of low orbit (few hundred to thousand kilometers above earth) satellites that orbit a dozen times a day or more. That's a dozen times a day that the satellite has to be sure it doesn't get fried. And if the microwave transmitter is on the moon, its beam will also cross near the orbits of geosynchronous satellites about once a day.

Second, it's 3rd, not 3nd.

Lunar power plant...

[svara]

...and beaming the energy back to earth using microwaves.

Has anybody here placed Sim City 2000? You can build such power plants there - one of the dangers is when the microwave beam misses the ground antenna and ignites some nearby houses. Inspiring... :)

star wars on the moon? great idea

[brarrr]

Want to put lasers on the moon to shoot at asteroids carrying bruce willis and ben affleck? Great!

Worried someone might turn it towards earth to shoot at this little mostly harmless rock because matt daemon still resides here? No worries!

Put them on the dark side of the moon - not the floyd album, but the side we never see... last I checked there would have to be a preeeeeety sophisticated system of mirrors to reach us from there.

Wait. Mirrors in space and ben affelck? What am i talking about, I must have just taken my last final and have had a few beers already. Whos that knocking at my door?

Ping!

[karot]

Moon rotates around Earth, zapping microwaves at the surface...

***PING!***

6 Billion cooked people - Heated from the inside :)

Dr. Evil Lives!

[MarkusH]

I put this "laser beam" on the moon. And when it reaches Washington D.C. and every other major city, it will blow it up. It is my "Death Star".

Obligatory joke

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough* ripoff *cough*

Target Practice

[juliao]

The moon not being a geo-stationary object, how are they planning on effectively beaming the energy down? By targeting a few selected base stations? And missing?

Re:Target Practice

[Jburkholder]

I think they solved this problem in one of the Batman movies, didn't they? You just have 3 or 4 huge mil-sats up there to initially catch the beam and then pass it around until it gets reflected down to an earth-station just outside of Gotham.

Of course, you still have to not miss the first satellite. ;-)

Finally...

[dygytyz]

And me with my mirror, I shall finally destroy the moon and the tiny green aliens that live on it! Muahahahahahahaaaaaah.

Sounds like an episode of Pinky and the Brain...

If they don't bite, lower the price...

[ObligatoryUserName]

The solar power plant on the moon idea has been around for quite a while, but the last time I heard of it, the estimated cost was more than a trillion dollars (I seem to recall it being closer to 2 trillion dollars). Even though it cost so much, the scientist (I can't remember who it was, so it might be the same guy) said it could make back all its costs in under a year by selling power to everyone on Earth at a rate that was lower than what we would pay otherwise.

What I'm curious to know is has the cost of space missions gone down so much since then that it can now be done for the $59 billion listed in the article, rather than the >$1 trillion number cited a number of years ago, or is there some new trick (sure sounds the same), or is this guy just making up a lower number so that people will actually listen to him? Anyone out there heard of this Prof. Criswell before? I'd really like to believe that this is a viable option.

Can anyone tell me why...

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

we should spend trilions on space based power plants when 80% of amazon hydroeletrical potential is not yet in use ???

Re:Can anyone tell me why...

[Tattva]

I am not an expert on the Amazon ecosystem, but neither are you, I suspect. Doesn't it seem likely that we would further shrink the rainforest by changing something as critical as the Amazon's water level? It would require clearing land, quarrying stone and sand, flooding valleys, and interrupting any natural flood/drought cycle (which many ecosystems use to their advantage, btw.) And if we are trying to solve North American energy problems, power generation in the Amazon would have only a marginal effect if any at all.

Re:Can anyone tell me why...

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

If you take in account the adverse efects microwaves beamed from space will have to the whole earth ecosystem, we're in a lose-lose situation.

on a second tought the 50+ bilion for the lunar project would be better spent in researching wind/solar panel/tides as viable power sources.

Not to mention...

[Chris Burke]

A geo-synchronous satellite would be a lot easier to aim at a stationary ground-based receiver.

Seriously, I've heard this exact same idea before, but with geosynchronous satellites in place of "the moon", which sounds kinda silly in the first place. Of course it still has the same dangers.

Re:Not to mention...

[Jburkholder]

But then isn't the geo-synchronous satellite in shadow part of the day?

Re:Not to mention...

[skroz]

That's why you use a series of them scattered over the equator. With a network of satellites that not only act as collectors and transmitters, but as RELAYS, you could beam power from those satellites that ARE in light to those that are NOT. You could then provide constant power planet-wide, even on the "dark" side.

Re:Not to mention...

[Jburkholder]

kinda like that Batman movie with mr Freize?

Re:Not to mention...

[WolfWithoutAClause]

The orbit above the equator is at a quite significant angle to the shadow cast by the earth, due to the angle of dip of the rotation of the earth. That means that the shadow only intersects the geosynchronous orbit about twice per year.

IRC geosynchronous satellites only see darkness for about 40 minutes per year.

This contrasts rather sharply with nearly all points on the lunar surface which see darkness once per month for half the month.

Re:Not to mention...

[WolfWithoutAClause]

There aren't really any dangers. The power density of the microwaves that the clued up people talk about are only the same as the power that is emitted by cellphones; you could stand in the beam with no protection and no problems at all.

There's no physical way to make the antennas focus be any tighter than that given the size of the antenna and the wavelength that is proposed; and the power delivered is limited by the size of the solar panels.

Re:Not to mention...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're thinking of Mosaic Man.

Pointless

[mischief]

Maybe one day we'll be able to illuminate the earth by pointing the moon this way!

Won't happen anytime soon...

[billmaly]

Reason: Oil companies can't make money off of it.

Same reason that solar/wind/geothermal/hydro/tidal power are still viewed as "alternative" sources of power, not mainstream, viable energy sources. These means are all non polluting (when compared to fossil fuels), 100% renewable, and require massive upfront expenditures. Until the oil is GONE, you won't see any of these replacing good old reliable burning of fossil fuels. When the oil does run out, the screams of the populace will echo for miles, and they'll have themselves and their companies to blame. End of rant.

Re:Won't happen anytime soon...

[ethereal]

Actually, right now the State of Illinois is investigating a massive wind farm in Southern Illinois. The motivation behind this is that apparently the City of Chicago is about to its power suppliers to use 20% "green" energy. Of course, most power in IL is nuclear right now anyway, so we're not very beholden to the oil companies (well, other than to power the massive trucks we drive at top speeds around here).

I heard this report on the news yesterday so I may have a couple details wrong here and there...

Re:Won't happen anytime soon...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you liberal freaks think there is always some business conspiracy lurking around every corner, but if you did any research you'd prove yourselves wrong. The reason why "solar/wind/geothermal/hydro/tidal power are still viewed as 'alternative' sources of power" is because they are not cost efficient. A few years ago, I priced some solar panels and based on the current cost of oil/nuclear power, figured the panels would pay for themselves in about 30 years. I don't know how long solar panels will last, but if LEDs degrade in brightness after 10 years, surely solar panels won't last forever with their year in year out thermal expanding and contracting. Face it. Solar power is expensive-- the semiconductor panels require a lot of energy to produce. Growing large near-perfect crystals at a hellish temperature is not cheap. Also remember that these panels were produced using cheap oil/nuclear power. They'd certainly would cost more if they were produced with expensive solar power. There are other practical considerations, too. Solar panels, being near black, absorb a lot of heat and thus placing them on rooftops in warm regions will increase air conditioning power usage. If solar panels can't be put on rooftops, then where should they go? Nobody has come up with a good answer for that.

Re:Won't happen anytime soon...

[RFC959]

Until the oil is GONE, you won't see any of these replacing good old reliable burning of fossil fuels. When the oil does run out, the screams of the populace will echo for miles, and they'll have themselves and their companies to blame.

Here's my prediction: the oil will never be GONE, and you will eventually see something replace it. After all, we stopped using wood, peat moss, and whale oil for fuel sources, but you may have noticed that trees, peat bogs, and whales all still exist. We didn't stop using them because we "ran out" of any of them, and oil will be no different. We switch energy sources when the cost of the old one starts to go up; this encourages research into different energy sources, which lowers the costs of new ones, encouraging a switch. So, when oil starts to become harder to find and extract, other things will look like a better deal, and we'll switch long before we run out. Hopefully this can be "end of Ehrlichian silliness" as well as "end of rant"...

Re:Won't happen anytime soon...

[overunderunderdone]

Reason: Oil companies can't make money off of it.

What the hell does that have to do with it? The problem is that solar/wind/geothermal/hydro/tidal companies CAN'T make money off of it. If you think they can then build one and prove it.

These means are all non polluting (when compared to fossil fuels)

True but that is not to say that on a scale sufficient to compete with fossil fuels they won't have an environmental impact. Just look at the environmentalist complaints about all the eagles slaughtered by California wind farms and those that want to destroy the hydroelectric dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

Until the oil is GONE, you won't see any of these replacing good old reliable burning of fossil fuels.

That is sort of true. The market will use whatever is cheaper. As prices for fossil fuel energy rises due to increasing scarcity and/or alternative energy costs fall due to advancing technology there will be a slow switch as alternative sources start to beat fossil fuels on price. Big caveat - the market will use whichever is cheaper, but in such heavily regulated industries government policy substantially distorts the market. Environmental regulations, subsidies, government sponsored cartels (like OPEC) and even our foreign policy all have a huge effect on the market. Still in the long run even governments can't ignore economic realities - unless they want to go the way of the Soveit Union.

When the oil does run out, the screams of the populace will echo for miles, and they'll have themselves and their companies to blame.

People won't even notice. Oil won't just disappear without the price going up as it becomes more scarce, as it becomes more scarce other energy sources will become economically feasible.

What are these guys on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, setting up huge lasers or microwave emitters on the moon? whcih can or are pointed at the earth? DAMMIT, PEOPLE, HAVEN'T YOU SEEN THE JAMES BOND MOVIES? We're just asking for some criminal genius to come and take things over here...

We've seen this before!

[agrounds]

What do we do if James Woods hijacks a flight to the base and fires the laser repeatedly at the Earth's Gaia ?? Did anyone think of that?

I am a penguin

[Anonymous Coward]

Im alive, ill eat your windows for breakfast and apples for lunch!

Just hope Homer doesn't work at this power plant..

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

"Hey Homer, adjust the aim by 0.0002 degrees!"

Atlanta, Georgia evaporates.

In all seriousness, aiming megawatt particle beams at the earth is not a solution to our problems. Hell, has any one even considered the possible effects on weather this might have?

Phear the moon!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, now I can only go out when the moon is on the other side of the planet... that's just great!

Apparently he's been at it for some time...

[juliao]

LiftOff'96 Session

100 style points....

[Rude Turnip]

to the first 1337 hacker that commandeers the laser and carves "CHA" into Siberia!

Potential for Misuse

[PineHall]

Both ideas have the scary potential to be aimed at earth for mass destruction. You can build in safe guards but people always find a way around such safe guards. In the wrong hands it could spell disaster. Human nature as it is, someone will find a creative way to do it.

Re:my first poster

[phoebus1553]

oh wait... I just realized something... the dark side of the moon is dark for a reason... THERE's NO SUN THERE! HAH....

but seriously folks, I'll be here all week, remember to tip your waitress...

That is rather strange...

[DAldredge]

I don't know how anyone could consider getting rid of OBL to be an evil act...

Re:That is rather strange...

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it evil. He's a pretty nice guy actually. You just trust your government and media a little too much. But not much more can be expected from you, for you see...you are a sheep.

Obligitory Dr. Evil quote...

[Graff]

"We'll turn the moon into what I like to call a 'Death Star'."

Beaming electricity via microwaves?

[Anonymous Coward]

And how long before l33t h4x0rs figure out a way to tap into this beam for free juice?

The Infamous ALAN PARSON'S PROJECT!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Muuuuhaaaaaaaa!!!

Can we say ....

[TheViffer]

to much Star Wars?

Guess someone wants there own Death Star or something.

What is a 'LASER'?

[joebp]

'Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my moon base. You've all been chosen to be part of my elite moon unit, which is divided into two divisions. Moon Unit Alpha, and Moon Unit Zappa.'
Dr. Evil

Anyone who claims they don't have at least a tiny inkling that these guys got the idea from Dr. Evil is a LIAR .

The atmosphere!!

[Anonymous Coward]

AAAAAAHHH! The atmosphere!

AAAAAAHHH.

Re:The atmosphere!!

[ethereal]

Wolfcastle: "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!"

Re:The atmosphere!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Man I miss those commercials. They were so wonderfully hokey.

Is just me...?

[juliao]

Or does everyone else get the feeling that some people have too much free time on their hands?

Are we actually paying people to come up with these ideas?

Yikes...

[ryanvm]

I'd hate to be one of the sorry bastards that has to live near the receiving dish.

On the bright side, at least you'd never have to worry about heating bills for your home.

I wonder.....

[pipith]

I wonder if this is part of bushes' plan to creat a missile defense system.

Re:I wonder.....

[zhar]

Would that be such a bad thing -- to be defended from other countries and still have an alternative source of power?

Lasers on the Moon...

[ITrualseO]

I think I'll steer clear of the now growing theme of Dr. Evil and SW jokes, even though I don't really have the technical knowledge to make a seriosly intelligent post. I think it's an interesting idea that we're finally looking beyond the earthly horizon for our current/future power needs. Eventually those 'in power' will have to realize that they can't pretend we have infinite resources and actually have to create a solution, not play their pointless political games.

Re:Lasers on the Moon...

[JMZero]

It is true we don't have infinite power. But I really don't think harvesting solar energy on the moon is our next reasonable alternative.

I believe there still exists areas here on Earth not covered by solar panels.

If anything, this story seems to be sort of alternative energy satire - ie "You can have the status quo, or we can put a giant microwave power plant on the moon. And ill tempered sea bass."

Re:Lasers on the Moon...

[ITrualseO]

I agree that the microwaving of energy from a moon plant isn't exactly the most viable of solutions, but I just meant that at least we're starting to look elsewhere.

Re:star wars on the moon? great idea

[Deagol]

Worried someone might turn it towards earth to shoot at this little mostly harmless rock because matt daemon still resides here?

Not Matt, but maybe the Baldwins.

Chairfaced Chipandale

[steveo777]

So... how long before the word "CHA" appears on the moon. A la The Tick.

Giant Laser on the moon

[Elmar_Stoned_at_Work]

So is this part of the allen parsons project?

FIRE THE "laser"

-elmar-

Re:page widening post!

[AtariDatacenter]

Oh. Yeah. I reported the bug. Jamie fixed it.

Thanks for the free QA work, Troll.

Michael:

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking toad.

Not here at home

[famazza]

As far as they don't point this dam microwave beam near home (about 500km) I don't care.

Gee, what's next? Alien Invasion that burns everything into Trees? Life imitates the games, maxims really hited the bullseye this time.

We'll stand around and dance Thriller.

[Myself]

But seriously, we'll just have to wait until it overheats itself and blows up, taking him with it.

I know what they'll name it...

[Rothfuss]

Moon Unit Zappa.

-Rothfuss

Re:Just hope Homer doesn't work at this power plan

[Dimensio]

Apparently you missed this part of the article:

When asked about possible adverse effects a megawatt laser might have on the Earth's weather patterns Prof. Criswell responded, "Why...no...of course not...whatever gave you the idea that this device could be used to hold the world hostage under threat of global weather disasters should they fail to meet my demands? MUHAHAHAHA!"

20 percent of noontime sunlight

[vlad_petric]

AFAIK 20 percent is roughly the efficiency of a photovoltaic cell. So you'd need a close to 100% efficiency for a rectenna just to break even with photovoltaic cells (from a surface standpoint).
It may be cheaper to build rectennas, however I'm not convinced how it could break even in 5 years with >50 billion spent.

The Raven

Re:20 percent of noontime sunlight

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rectenna", of course, being short for "rectum antenna"

Laughably stupid.

[Ogerman]

Criswell's idea might seem loopy, but he insists that it would be achievable if the U.S. government would commit to spending the money -- estimated at roughly three times the $19 billion budget of the Apollo space program.

What the heck are these people smoking? Do they realize how many standard earth-bound solar cells and wind generators $57 billion could buy?

I've got an even better idea

[SIGFPE]

Why not spend $50,000,000,000 on solar panels for use on Earth. This proposal has a number of cool features:

1. You don't have to send lots of equipment up to the moon
   
2. You don't have the hassle of building microwave transmitters and receivers to transmit the energy to the Earth
   
3. They couldn't easily be hijacked to make a nasty weapon
   
4. The equipment would be easy to service. You wouldn't need regular flights carrying crews to the moon.
   

Re:I've got an even better idea

[Triv]

earth-based solar power is inherently unreliable. Remember, there's no atmosphere on the moon. That means no weather and nothing to diffuse the power of the sun's rays. Oh, and that whole night thing. There is no night on the light side of the moon.

What good is an entire array of solar-power stations somewhere if it's an overcast day and NONE of them recieve power? It's great as a backup, but if it's the only source of electricity for a region...well, then they're kinda screwed.

Re:I've got an even better idea

[hoggoth]

> Oh, and that whole night thing. There is no night on the light side of the moon.

Except that there is no such thing as the "light side of the moon." Where do you get your information from, Pink Floyd album names?

The "dark side of the moon" is the face that is always turned away FROM THE EARTH. The "light side" can be surmised to mean the face that is always facing the Earth. That has nothing to do with which part of the moon is currently facing the Sun.

Unless by "light side of the Moon" you are referring to the side that happens to be facing the Sun at any given time. In that case there is no night on the light side of the Earth either.

Re:I've got an even better idea

[Mobutu]

>Why not spend $50,000,000,000 on solar panels for >use on Earth.

Because you would produce far more electricity if u use those dollars to buy home trainers, ship them to third world countries, and let them peddle over there for half a dollar a day.

You can even use that fancy microwave transmitter to get your electricity back to the US.

Re:I've got an even better idea

[SpaceHamster]

Your idea has a number of flaws also.. to name a few:

1. You don't have to send lots of equipment up to the moon
2. You don't have the hassle of building microwave transmitters and receivers to transmit the energy to the Earth
3. Ummm.. moving right along
4. The equipment would be easy to service. You wouldn't need regular flights carrying crews to the moon.

Re:I've got an even better idea

[111Starcsream111]

>What good is an entire array of solar-power stations somewhere if it's an overcast day and NONE of them recieve power? It's great as a backup, but if it's the only source of electricity for a region...well, then they're kinda screwed. Although presumably the stations would be built in more than one region, and the excess electricity generated by some would be sold to the others.

Re:I've got an even better idea

[SIGFPE]

What good is an entire array of solar-power stations somewhere if it's an overcast day and NONE of them recieve power?

OK, you have to siphon off some of the G$50 to pay for reservoirs, big pumps and turbines. On the really sunny days you pump waters up a mountain into the reservoir. On the cloudy days you generate hydroelectric power with the water you pumped up. And if it's cloudy for a really long time you use the money you earnt renting out jetskis to tourists visiting the reservoir and spend it on importing power.

Re:I've got an even better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why not spend $50,000,000,000 on solar panels for use on Earth. This proposal has a number of cool features:"

How many square miles would that many solar pannels & wind turbines cover? Where are you going to put them?

There's something to be said for the ability to effieciently generate lots of power while using very little surface space on Earth.

Re:I've got an even better idea

[Mr. Foogle]

> Why not spend $50,000,000,000 on solar panels for use on Earth.

Because the Sierra Club and Earth Firsters don't LIKE people building solar panels (or much else) on the land that is suitable for solar power. Never mind that solar can (help) replace the bad nuclear and coal plants, it's all Bad.

No one (yet) cares much about messing up the surface of the moon.

Re:I've got an even better idea

[Jazu]

:3. They couldn't easily be hijacked to make a nasty weapon

How would they get there? Hijacking the space shuttle?

Re:I've got an even better idea

[SIGFPE]

Where are you going to put them?

Just about any (mostly) uninhabited desert on Earth.

Re:I've got an even better idea

[Captain Nitpick]

Why not spend $50,000,000,000 on solar panels for use on Earth. This proposal has a number of cool features:

1. You don't have to send lots of equipment up to the moon
2. You don't have the hassle of building microwave transmitters and receivers to transmit the energy to the Earth
3. They couldn't easily be hijacked to make a nasty weapon
4. The equipment would be easy to service. You wouldn't need regular flights carrying crews to the moon.

Because it has a number of sucky features:

1. You have to secure lots and lots and lots of land to put the solar panels on. There goes all your money.
2. Ecosystem destruction. What, you thought all of the solar panels could be stuck in the Sahara? The problem of distributing power from one location on Earth to all others isn't any easier than beaming it back from the moon.
3. Reduced power generation. The Earth has a thick atmosphere with clouds of water vapor floating around in it. The moon effectively has no atmosphere to block incoming light. A power transmission beam can be tuned for minimal absorption by the atmosphere.
4. Increased service.

   On the moon, you've got two factors causing maintenance. 1. the twice-monthly transition between hot and producing power and cold and not producing power. 2. General "wear" of the solar panels over their lifetimes.

   On earth, you've still got those two problems, but you also have precipitation, a corrosive atmosphere, natural disasters, war, general human stupidity, and tiny mammals that decide that the control box is a great place to build a nest.

Re:I've got an even better idea

[SIGFPE]

The problem of distributing power from one location on Earth to all others isn't any easier than beaming it back from the moon

Well you don't have to put all of the panels in one place you know...

Re:"And we shall call it the 'Alan Parson's Projec

[OmegaDan]

"Grand funk Railroad paived the way for Jefferson Airplane which paved the way for Jefferson Starship which in turn paved the way for The Alan Parsons Project which I think was some kind of hovercraft."

(homer):)

didn't we learn our lesson from Sim City?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember one of the disasters in Sim City was a microwave powerplant laser goes wild and starts fires all over the city? can sim city be listed as 'educational software' ?

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody here ever read that sci-fi book where the prisoner-colonists on the moon started pummelling the earth with large railgun-accelerated containers full of rocks?

Re:The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

[Anonymous Coward]

Robert Heinlein, if I'm not mistaken.

Re:The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the protaganist's name was "Osama".

Microwave Power? Like SimCity 2000?

[josquint]

I remeber those microwave power plants in SimCity 2000. They were expensive, but put out tons of power... only thing was.. if it missed :) I lost 2 million people, and the fires took a year to put out! haha :)

Serously though, is the moon such a good idea for the collector? For one thing... it rotates, so either you only get power to the night side of the earth for 14 days, or you put more than one collector/emitter on it(probably more than a few sets too!)

And, in case nobody has noticed, it doesn't stay in the same spot in the sky!!! It's gonna be a bitch to aim the microwave stream from a moving platform. Talk about SimCity!!! Your gonna carve a stripe aound the earth!!! Well, actually, it shouldn't start massive fires all over the place, but geez, i dont want 2Gwatts fireing down on my house, that'll fry everthing peice of electronics that i own. Besides, that's ALOT of wasted power if it goes uncollected.

I think i'm liking the geo-sync sattelite idea better :)

I can see it now..

[Yahiko]

..In the war room at the white house...

"George, stop humping the laser. Why don't you and the laser get a frickin' room?"

--Yahiko

Heh...

[Sj0]

I call it...The death star.

Re:Heh...

[Anonymous Coward]

You and about sixty other dweebs in this thread.

Re:Heh...

[Sj0]

Just means it's a popular joke. Is it my fault that Austin Powers is a popular movie?

So where's the energy density?

[Myself]

The microwave energy beam, which could pass through rain and clouds, would have the intensity of about 20 percent of noontime sunlight...

Okay, so if this thing is so much weaker than sunlight, why wouldn't we just use terrestrial solar cells to receive existing sunlight rather than some receiving station for funky microwave power?

Come on! In order to be even slightly useful, the energy beam coming back would have to be terribly intense, which would make it terribly dangerous. Even noontime sunlight can be nasty, ask a suburban sidewalk ant or any pale-skinned swimwear-clad human.

Re:So where's the energy density?

[FrostyWheaton]

Question: "how much 'noontime sunlight' does any place on earth get?"
Answer: "very little"

Even if you assumed that there was never any cloud cover or fog, the most actual sunlight you can expect is ~12hrs a day. And only a few hours of that is anything close to directly overhead. I would venture to guess that even in the perfect weather case you are averaging less than 20% of noontime intensity, and that is not including down time because of atmospheric concerns.

A geo-stationary sattelite would recieve dirct sunlight >90% of the time, and is not subject to weather concerns. A moon-base would have day/night problems, but doesn't have the suns energy absorbed by an atmosphere or any cloud cover.

It may have a large cost, but compared to other solar-collection schemes it has the most reliability of any plan in existence.

Watch Your Eyes

[Myriad]

It seems inevitable that whenever there is a story regarding lasers we get to see all sorts of silly posts about blasting people with laser.

Even antimissle lasers have a long way to go. Between power requirements, beam handling, divergence, and atmospheric interference, lasers do not make great destructive weapons.

However, they would be damned good for some nasty tricks like blinding the enemy army (or, unfortunately, civilians).

Take this scenario: a bomber/cargo style aircraft has been outfitted with a large infrared laser (similar things have been done). Fly said aircraft over the people you wish to 'zap'. Release some fireworks or other attention getting devices and when the crowd looks up turn on and start scanning the laser.

Since the laser is infrared nobody would know they are being exposed to blinding levels of light, nor would the blink/aversion reaction take place. By the time you noticed anything the permanent damage has been done. Scary huh?

Another scenario under serious consideration by police (at least here in Canada, I've participated in meetings on the subject) is the use of lasers against commercial aircraft. The idea isn't to shoot down the aircraft, but to scan at temporarily blind the pilot during final night approaches. The effect is like someone flashing a camera flash in your face when your in a dark room.

As the few moments prior to landing are the most critical, distracting and flash blinding the pilot could easily lead to the plane crashing.

Worse, new solid state lasers are available in the 3watt (plenty of power to cause permanent blindness) range and can be powered off a car with an inverter. Simply park at the end of a convenient runway at night, plug 'er in and away you go. Ok, so it's not quite that easy, but the concept is...

Doesn't that all just scare you a bit more than some silly death ray?

Note: after saying all that I want to point out that I do not support the insane regulations placed against the use of lasers in the United States by the CDRH. It's totally ridiculous and overzealous.

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[GiorgioG]

In this case, they'll have to be so accurate with the laser "targetting" that they may as well be shooting at the plane with a sniper rifle. The chances of blinding both the pilot and co-pilot on a final approach are pretty nil I would guess. And lets not forget that the plane is travelling around 150mph on the approach, along with possible crosswinds, etc. I find it unlikely that someone could do this without some extreme level of targeting accuracy (i.e. an aiming system of some sort).

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[nickgrieve]

Another scenario under serious consideration by police (at least here in Canada, I've participated in meetings on the subject) is the use of lasers against commercial aircraft.

The Canadians are terrorists, I knew it.

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not use one of those huge spotlights they wheel out occasionally for mall openings and whatnot? They're already mounted on trucks or trailers, are certainly bright enough to temporarily blind someone from several hundred yards away, and are probably pretty easy to steal. You might want a separate get away vehicle though.

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[Thng]

The canadians sure are terrorists!
check out this page: http://www.ryanthiessen.com/canada/

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[Tattva]

In this case, they'll have to be so accurate with the laser "targetting" that they may as well be shooting at the plane with a sniper rifle.

I don't think you've taken all the factors into consideration. The surface area of the forward profile of a sniper's bullet is, say, .5 sqare inches or less. If you have a laser with the same profile and it takes .1 seconds to blind someone at a critical time and you have 30 seconds to do this you will have an effective surface area of 30 / .1 * .5 square inches, or approximately 150 square inches of effective exposure, or 300 times the opportunity to hit your target. You merely need to hold the laser steady enough that it tends to expose its target for at least .1 seconds at a time. Or perhaps I'm smoking something.

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[xtp]

Blinding the pilot was a scenario in a Tom Clancy
novel. Couple of cia guys hide in the weeds
with equipment brought in through Japanese customs
as professional camera gear. They zap the pilots
on approach and the cause of the crash is not
apparent to investigators.

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[FrostyWheaton]

At first, I thought you were saying that the police were trying to blind pilots for some reason. But anyways...BR>
Blinding pilots was actually a major plot point in Tom Clancy's novel Debt of Honor. Clark and Chavez, the two CIA spooks had the equivalent of a massive flashbulb w/ parabolic mirror and scope. They got in the landing path of a few military surveilance airplanes and *FLASH* they're blind and the planes crash and burn.

In short it's already been thought of, just like flying airliners full of fuel into buildings (also in Debt of Honor btw). I think that Tom Clancy guy should quit writing, he's giving too many people too many ideas.

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[DeMorganLaw]

The US Airforce has a squadron of 747's with chemical lasers mounted on the nose of the plane. They are designed as anti-ICBM platforms and have tested well in that role. At $3000 in chemicals to fire the laser much cheaper than interceptor missles. The range of the laser is also less than the proposed anti-ICBM interceptorsk, and more prone to failure in bad weather. Not so silly is it?

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[winter@jurai.net]

You're assuming that the pilots are looking out the window on final, which they're not, and that you'll have an angle on them through the window, which you won't.

Also, that your laser will penetrate the glass of the window with sufficient coherence to blind someone.

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[Anonymous Coward]

747's? Chem lasers? Um, what's your source for all that?

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[Tattva]

I was addressing the argument in the original e-mail, not every conceivable argument as to why it is less than feasible. I'll let history stand in as a proxy for that, since it has never happened it is probably not feasible today (with the exception of incidental blinding in Las Vegas where laser shows have been known to blind pilots, but not on approach as far as I know.)

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[delcielo]

There are a few (2-3) reports each year of pilots being temporarily blinded by those laser light shows at amusement parks, or places like Las Vegas. Notices to airmen are posted warning pilots of the dangers at certain airports. For that matter, you don't really even need to damage their eyes, if you can sufficiently impact their night vision, you create essentially the same hazard. They may be flying on instruments until short final; but they will transition to a visual approach at some point and become vulnerable. It happens accidentally, so to do it deliberately does not at all seem that impossible.

Re:Watch Your Eyes

[dfenstrate]

Not quite. The first plane's heavily modified fuselage is almost done being assembled at Boeing. They still need to integrate the laser into the platform and check it out. It's still early in that program- but we might have a fleet a few years from now.

Who owns the moon?

[killmenow]

But what about the property rights? Who says the US has the right (or lack thereof) to put anything like this on the moon?

Re:Who owns the moon?

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is simple, and it's the same one that's been used for any property (terristerial or otherwise) throughout time.

Who owns the moon? Whoever is willing to use force to defend their assertion that they own it.

--
Spaz!

Re:Who owns the moon?

[codeweevils.com]

Hey, they better not build it on the bit of the moon the certificate hanging on my wall says I own!

Re:Who owns the moon?

[glwtta]

I presume the old rules still hold - whoever gets there first "claims" it and kills all the natives (should be easy in this case), then the latecomers get to have a war with them for a couple decades. Then a bit later the descendants of the victors declair their independence.

Re:Who owns the moon?

[GKChesterton]

Lets see. How many US flags have been planted on the moon? And how many other countries' flags?

If you don't like the flag method of ownership. Lets just say the moon is up for grabs. Whoever can get there can do what they want...

Re:Who owns the moon?

[KrizDog]

From

Recently, a legal dispute has arisen between Mr. Dennis Hope, an American business man, who is selling estate on the moon after having filed a claim for ownership with his local United States authorities, and Mr. Martin Jorgens, a German pensioner who can show a certificate of the 17th-century Prussian King Frederick the Great, bestowing upon his ancestor the ownership of the moon as an award for services rendered.

Neither of these claims could possibly be honoured, however. You cannot give away what you do not possess yourself, and that holds good for an American municipal official as well as for a Prussian king. And apart from that, the most fundamental Article of space law, Article II of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 (often called the 'Magna Carta' of Space Law), expressly excludes the possibility that any state may incorporate any part of outer space, including the moon, into its territory.

Re:Who owns the moon?

[RFC959]

For all your space lawyer needs...Ward & Partners Space Law!

Seriously, this site has a good collection of documents on what constitutes current "space law". There are various treaties, many of which say airy-fairy stuff to the effect of "The Moon is the common property of all humanity and no one is allowed to own any of it and anything you earn from it has to be shared with all of the world..." Which is going to go right out the window once people start finding serious uses for the Moon, believe you me.

Re:Who owns the moon?

[overunderunderdone]

Who says the US has the right (or lack thereof) to put anything like this on the moon?

The "lack thereof" in brackets answers the main question. Whoever gets there and does it will have the "right" to go there and do it. I imagine the way we deal with completely unclaimed territory is still found under the "finders keepers losers weepers" clause of international law. I imagine something along the lines of an explorer planting his flag in the dirt and declaring "I claim this bit of rock for $sponsoring_country" which come to think of it the USA has already done on the moon.

Re:Who owns the moon?

[Anonymous Coward]

well i would probably say that christians own the moon, after all u don't see any budists up there do u. or any muslems. remember the first man to step on the moon (niel armstrong) was a christian, also buzz aldren read the bible on the moon too. therefore christians own the moon

it's interesting that the chinese communists (athiests) are planning to put a chinaman on the moon, they might find themselves in a bit of trouble if they try that :):)

Re:Who owns the moon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Russia own space then?

Re:Who owns the moon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gawd are you stupid.

Re:Who owns the moon?

[glwtta]

Until someone gets something up there with some firepower to it - yes.

Re:Who owns the moon?

[Anonymous Coward]

This american businessman (I actually bought some land from him too) claims that as an individual, he is not a "state", and therefore can claim ownership. Here is the stuff from his online FAQ (www.lunarembassy.com):

1. What is Law today.

With regard to extraterrestrial property sales, two treaties exist today.

These treaties do not refer to "ownership" as such, they more commonly refer to the "exploitation of the Moon and other celestial bodies for profit purposes", and extraterrestrial property sales distinctly fall under that section. The treaties are, The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Moon Treaty of 1984.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet.

What does this mean? Well it means that governments can not appropriate the Moon or other celestial bodies. Effectively, governments have signed to the fact that they have no rights to these bodies at all. As a law expert will tell you, what is actually important here is what the Outer Space Treaty does not say. It explicitly does not say whether commercial enterprises or private individuals can claim, exploit or appropriate the celestial bodies for profit. (Note that the Lunar Embassy are not a government.)

You may think that this is a real stretch of the law but fortunately it is not. The UN and all countries that signed the Outer Space Treaty became aware of this vital ommission almost immediately after the treaty was ratified in 1967. In fact, the United Nations have expended a large amount of time trying to ratify an amendment to the treaty ever since, that would explicitly include corporations and individuals. Unfortunately, all attempts at ratifying such an amendment failed because member states did not agree with it. So, in the end, all the ratification attempts were summarized into the famous Moon Treaty some 15 years later. This information is well documented fact today.

2. The Moon Treaty forbids the exploitation of Space, the Moon and other celestial bodies for profit motives. According to the Moon treaty, individuals may not claim the Moon and other celestial bodies.

This is not a Myth. This is the absolute truth and as a result, some people name the Moon Treaty as a common objection to many private commercial enterprises that are or wish to exploit Lunar or planetary resources for profit.

Theres just one small, minor problem: Of all the approximately 185 member states of the UN only six states supported it. All others, including all spacefaring nations (USA, Russia, China etc) refused to sign it and did not sign it. That is something that does not seem to be well known. The USA explicitly refused to sign it as it would inhibit the exploitation of Lunar and other celestial resources for profit by corporations and individuals. Some websites actually incorrectly list the Moon Treaty as ratified. (Far more worrying...this includes Nasas own, published archives.)

We feel that the non ratification of the Moon Treaty is a good thing...imagine we found oil on the Moon and a company were by law prohibited from mining it? Surely, that is not in the publics interest. (and if you find it on your property...well congratulations...you are now rich!)

Here is what historical websites have to say about it: "The Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies is the infamous "Moon Treaty". It was killed by a handful of L5 Society activists who were the first to see that it would outlaw property rights in the rest of the universe and indefinitely bog down space settlement in a "common heritage of all mankind" morass. When as a result of the L5 Society efforts the US congress failed to ratify the treaty, the USSR also breathed a sigh of relief. They likewise did not ratify. The soviets were so surprised at the impact of this relatively unknown organization that they sent very obvious KGB members to chapter meetings in New York City to find out who they were. The Soviet Embassy in Washington DC subscribed to the L5 News for years afterwards."

The USA at the time said that they would prefer to see "How public opinion develops". Well it has. Many people on planet earth, from all walks of life love owning a property on the Moon or a property on another celestial body such as Mars. Many people also like to name stars, and this falls into the same category. You can not name something and charge for it, if it is illegal to exploit celestial resources for profit, which of course it is not, and therefore that's just fine. Regarding the naming of stars though you should be very careful. No matter what you are told, there is only one body that has the authority to name stars/craters/stellar objects etc. and this is the IAU (The International Astronomical Union), and the many companies that claim they will name a star for you do name it, but this name is not officially recognized. So yes, in regard to naming stellar objects, the planet is pretty organised, however with regard to extraterrestrial property rights, it is a different matter.

That is why the Lunar Embassy are not breaking any laws today...and you can look at a summary of that in Quicktime Movie format here.

This all sound nuts....is this really what is going on?

Fortunately yes. We say fortunately, because it allows the common public access to these resources. In the end of the day, it is all of our responsibility to ensure these bodies are taken care of. It gets more interesting. Many companies are gearing up to exploit lunar and celestial resources for profit. This is not a bad thing. In all cases we think it is a good thing. Take the Lunar Rover Initiative for example. NASA, the Robotics Institute and LunaCorp plans to launch the first "private" mission to the Moon in 2002. The plan is to put several remote controlled buggies onto the Moon, so that you can visit a kind of fun park, where you can, for money, with a Virtual Reality helmet on your head, cruise your own personal remote controlled buggy across the Lunar surface. (Yes, this is cool to say the least.) These companies could not do this, if it was illegal by any treaty to exploit the Moon for profit motives. And of course they know this, otherwise investors would not place over 900 million dollars into such a project. Note also that if these companies were affiliated with governments (like NASA was), the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 would prohibit their actions. But, they are private corporations now. This is therefore perfectly ok. (And hey, we can not wait to try one of those buggys..) Again they also protect all of mankinds right to this: anyone can go and pay to have a cruise across the Lunar Surface. Whether it is exploration or exploitation, is not for us to decide really, but the line seems to be getting thinner by the year. (And why this difference is of importance will become more clear below.)

Visit their website at : http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/lri/

The by now rather famous Artemis project will also launch to the Moon in the next few years, to get some rocks back to earth that they will happily sell to you as collectors items, mainly to fund their organization. Again they are a private organization.

Visit them at : http://www.asi.org/adb/j/02/legal-roadblocks.html

inefficient

[TheSHAD0W]

It would be overly inefficient to build facilities like that on the moon and then beam the power all the way to Earth. Not only would one have to contend with the lunar atmosphere, which while rarer than Earth's is much thicker, but the distance involved would limit the amount of power that could be transmitted.

It would be much better to build solar power satellites and launch them from Earth. The satellites would require less material than similar facilities on the moon, and though some of them might be manufactured from lunar material, the infrastructure necessary would be enormous. The distance would less than 1/10th as great, meaning at least 100X higher efficiency.

Re:inefficient

[hoggoth]

> the lunar atmosphere, which while rarer than Earth's is much thicker ...
> ... better to build solar power satellites and launch them from Earth

Yeah, but the atmosphere in space, where the satellites would go, while much rarer than Earth's is made of cottage cheese which would interfere with the power being transmitted.

Man... I hope you were joking about the Moon's "atmosphere"...

Re:inefficient

[TheSHAD0W]

http://www.asi.org/adb/06/09/04/1999/08/news-19990 814.html

It's not very much, but it exists, and it would probably sap a significant amount of the microwaves destined for Earth.

Re:inefficient

[hoggoth]

Even the Earth's atmosphere won't "sap a significant amount" of microwave radiation.
The moon's thin vapor of sodium and potassium ions won't do a thing.

Moon based power

[Mondrames]

I would think that the greatest hinderance to the moon power would be the rotation of the moon. If we were doing direct transmissions, for some part of the day, the moon would be over some place outside of US Jurisdiction. Therefore the Gov't is out (major trillion dollar player). Multi-national business -not gonna happen. Only one company controlling all of the power? BZZZZZZT. don't think so.

Probable solution?

Geosynchronous satellites that the moon "laser" beams energy too. These satellites relay the beam to the appropriate collector satellites, who then beam the energy to earth.

Advantages:
a) Multiple companies can be involved - pay Gov't royalty fees for moon power. Individual corps own each satellite network.

b) redundancy - with multiple companies, if one fails, loses satellites, yadda yadda - we have more backing it up

c)consistant "no fly zones" - Tell people you can't go here or they become tasty dinner treats.

Maybe could work.

How Will This Affect...

[Anonymous Coward]

How will this affect cooking times for microwave ovens ? If I burn my mouth eating lunch I`ll sue.

the author of this proposal...

[dirtdirt]

is named criswell. like the psychic in ed wood. remember? he was famous for his super wacky prophecies. like beaming electricity to the earth from giant power-plants on the moon....

Strange that...

[ZeroConcept]

The project is receiving unexpected economical support from this organization.

Two dumb ideas

[markmoss]

If you are going to do this beamed microwave thing, build it in Earth orbit, closer to the target. (distance)*(wavelength)= k*(diameter of transmitter aperture)*(diameter of beam at target), where k is a constant somewhere between 1/3 and 3. I think the moon is about 250,000 miles or 400,000 km away. So to focus a 30GHz (1 centimeter wavelength) microwave beam down to a 10 km spot on Earth takes an antenna about 400m across. Or in units the average American understands, a football-field sized antenna would put most, but not all, of the transmitted energy into a 10 mile wide spot. This whole area would have to be blanketed with receiving antennas (expensive!). And people living 20 miles away would be measuring the leaking energy and suing every time they got a cough. (Birds would be safely building nests on the antennas, but American trial lawyers never let science get in the way of a deep-pockets lawsuit.)

The best place for a solar power satellite is probably geosynchronous orbit (40,000 km). This needs a football-field sized transmitter and a mile-wide receiver; still pretty big, but maybe manageable. And the transmitter and receiver don't move relatively. A lunar array would have to keep switching between different receivers as the Earth turns. An SPS in a lower orbit would also have to keep switching receivers, but at least it would have smaller antennas.

A solar plant in orbit is in sunlight almost all the time (depending on distance from earth and orbital particulars, it might spend a few hours a year in earth-shadow). On the moon, two weeks out of every four is night.

The laser installation would also work better in a medium-height earth orbit, where it's solar panels were powered all the time and it was much closer to the targets. At least, I assume that it isn't meteroids headed for the moon that this is supposed to shoot down?

Re:Two dumb ideas

[ispdrudge]

Since geosynchronous satellites are over the equator, I think they'll be in the dark for several hours a day. Some of the craters near the moon's poles are believed to get sunlight continuously, but the power transmitting antennas would have to be re-aimed, I think. The
places with continuous, sunlit, stable orbits are
the L-5 points. I don't think any of this stuff is practical, or economic, for the production of domestic energy. They are, however, the "killer apps" if we had to prevent another Ice Age.

Re:Two dumb ideas

[Guppy06]

"The best place for a solar power satellite is probably geosynchronous orbit (40,000 km). This needs a football-field sized transmitter and a mile-wide receiver; still pretty big, but maybe manageable. And the transmitter and receiver don't move relatively. A lunar array would have to keep switching between different receivers as the Earth turns. An SPS in a lower orbit would also have to keep switching receivers, but at least it would have smaller antennas."

There is one advantage of the moon-based solution that isn't mentioned, though: The moon's orbit won't degrade any time soon. However, even geostationary satellites need to be replaced regularly every few years. So you either keep switching easily-maintained ground stations or you keep refitting and/or replacing hard-to-maintain orbital platforms.

"At least, I assume that it isn't meteroids headed for the moon that this is supposed to shoot down?"

I was under the impression that you were supposed to detect these things outside of the earth-moon system, hopefully at least two weeks outside it.

Re:Two dumb ideas

[markmoss]

I was under the impression that you were supposed to detect these things outside of the earth-moon system, hopefully at least two weeks outside it. If it's big enough to see that far out, a laser isn't going to do much to it.

Re:Two dumb ideas

[markmoss]

The Earth's equator is tilted 22 degrees relative to the sun, so much of the year a geosynchronous satellite would be "above" the north pole or "below" the south pole when swinging around the night side of the Earth. IIRC, the radius of a geosynch orbit is 40,000 km. At the solstices (maximum solar tilt, approximately June 22 & Dec 22), the height of the satellite above or below Earth (as viewed from the sun) would be 15,000 km; Earth is 12,000km diameter. At the equinoxes (approx March 22 & Sept 22), the tilt is "sideways" so the sun is directly above the equator, and the satellite would be shaded for a little while. The orbital circumference is 40,000 * 2 * pi = 251,000km. Earth's shadow is approximately 12,000 km wide. So the satellite is in the shade (12/251)*24 = 1.15 hours that day. That's the longest time of shading, and there should be a few months a year with no shading at all. Yes, you will need something to take over during the off periods -- but because power plants sometimes need maintenance, you've always got to have a backup plan anyhow, either splitting off power from other satellites or having something ground-based: gas turbines, hydro-electrics, flywheels, or a hell of a lot of batteries. (If I was designing the power grid, there'd be a flywheel backup unit every half-mile anyhow, so broken wires would never black out more than a half-mile area.)

By the way, it's possible to have a geosynchronous orbit more tilted than the equator, which gives more shade-free days in a year. Viewed from earth, the satellite moves back and forth above the equator on a north-south line, while always staying at the same longitude. This would require rocking the transmitting antenna back and forth on a 24 hour cycle. (The receivers wouldn't be strongly directional, so wouldn't have to move.)

If you stuck a solar array up from the moon's pole on a tall enough pole, it would be in sunlight all the time, but... The array has to be vertical, and it has to rotate with the moon to stay pointed at the sun. If you are going to send a significant amount of power to earth, you need square miles of solar arrays, and there at most two places on the moon that receive the sun all the time. I don't think a ten-mile-across rotating array is practical even at 1/6g, although it certainly would be spectacular to visiting aliens. ("Turn around and get out of here, there's no intelligent life AND they do things the hard way.") Also, there's the problem of getting the power to a part of the moon where it's practical to point a really big antenna at the Earth...

In geosynch orbit, you could build many smaller arrays, and the arrays and antennas wouldn't need much mechanical support. There is one issue if you are pointing the beam by physically pointing the antenna dish -- it's got to rotate relative to the solar array, so either it's out on a very long arm to the side or you've got some interference problems. OTOH, I think the best way to transmit this much power would be a phased array -- you have lots of output driver circuits each running one little basic antenna element, and you steer the beam by changing the phase relationships between the elements. You can also program in a split beam -- send part of the power to LA and part to Phoenix, for example. And of course, you have the emitters 360 degrees around the solar array, but only the half towards the Earth can operate at one time, except when you're also beaming power towards the Mars liner...

An Old and Silly Idea That Won't Go Awayt

[Prof_Dagoski]

Gawd, I've seen this idea so many times before. It's something they always bring out as a gee-whiz justification of manned space exploration. Y'know, just to show that space has practical applications. The arguements against are pretty persuasive. Safety, cost, and effectiveness. I don't buy it and didn't even think much of it as a kid. I just with these people would stop insulting our intelligence. A better way to address power consumption through technology is in effeciency. A good example that works is the new compact flourescent light bulbs. I've saved my bill before and compared it to after I swithced my apartment over to them. My power bill went down by a little less than half. Pretty nifty. I figure if we can do more with less, we can satisfy our needs for more people, and we can do it without crazy crap like this. In any case, some of the new home solar products are making this thing a moot point. In the meantime, there's lots of better reasons to explore and develop space.

1982 World's Fair proposed this

[GMontag]

I have mentioned this in the other, almost identical, articles on beaming power to earth from space.

There was a proposal for the 1982 Knoxville World's Fair to do this from a satellite and have the microwave beam land on a mesh reciever.

The pesky problem had something to do with safety of birds passing through the beam, since they do not read Notices to Airmen and have no concept of "no fly zones".

The problem is compounded by basing this on the moon, since it is not geocincronious and the beam would have to continuously move to stay on target. It can only be on one target about 12 hrs/day or so too. (Yes, they CAN generate through the whole lunar cycle since the collectors can be placed all around the moon and only the transmitter has to be on the near side)

Re:1982 World's Fair proposed this

[The Fun Guy]

...the beam would have to continuously move to stay on target. It can only be on one target about 12 hrs/day or so too...

That's not really a problem, though. You can set up receiver stations all around the globe, and whoever's in a position to receive would be the one getting the power. Ground based power plants would know when to ramp up or ramp down production to keep the grid fully functional.

Re:1982 World's Fair proposed this

[gorilla]

There was a proposal for the 1982 Knoxville World's Fair to do this from a satellite and have the microwave beam land on a mesh reciever.

So that's what the Sun Spherethat Nelson knocked over was for.

Re:1982 World's Fair proposed this

[giminy]

Actually, Asimov's famous little book (I, Robot) features a story entitled "Reason" in which this is depicted. Except that the solar station is in space, and not on the moon.

Dark Side of the Moon

[akiaki007]

So what happens on a new moon? The energy gets thrown back to the sun? :)

Re:Dark Side of the Moon

[vinnythenose]

as I understand it, a new moon is when the moon is behind the earth (relative to the sun). The same side of the moon is always facing the earth. It would just mean that the moon isn't getting any energy from the sun, but what would be stored in batteries could still be sent to the earth (if they could find a station to send it to since the earth is also rotating.)

We already have antennas

[KarmaBlackballed]

you simply stretch out a wire between two insulated poles, and the power just flows

You bring up an important point: powerlines and phone lines already cover the globe. They will pick up the power too. This may not be a good thing.

Re:We already have antennas

[hardburn]

The beam won't cover more than a few square km. Current powerlines and phone lines are no big deal.

Re:We already have antennas

[drsquare]

Erm, I seem to be under the impression that the moon isn't geostationary. You'd need a much bigger area than that. You'd need a strip all round the world so it could receive all day.

Re:We already have antennas

[YanIsa]

Hello,

or, say, three receiving stations on equator, spaced by 120 degrees - I assume you could point the beam. Four or more would be even better as there would be less atmosphere to penetrate (the angle would be closer to 90 deg in station's starting/finishing positions).

Yan

Re:We already have antennas

[Zurgutt]

>>you simply stretch out a wire between two insulated poles, and the power just flows
>You bring up an important point: powerlines and phone lines already cover the globe. They will pick up the power too. This may not be a good thing.

On the contrary! Lets just not focus the beam, so it will fall over the entire globe, power lines will pick it up and lo' - everything lights up magically! :-)

Re:page widening post!

[Anonymous Coward]

open source software development at it's finest.

think how long it would have taken to be fixed if we were running Microsoft Slashdot-Like Message Board.

oh wait, they wouldn't fix it, they'd call it a formatting feature!

Catching them is a lot simpler than that

[Spamalamadingdong]

No, they don't boil water and spin turbines. What you do is to take the microwaves, catch them with an antenna (they are radio, after all) and rectify them with a diode (what you get is just very, very high-frequency alternating current which can be converted to DC with that most simple of all semiconductor devices).

Before you go "Bah", please understand that this has actually been tested over an atmospheric path crossing as much air as you'd need to from a typical orbit, and efficiencies around 80% were measured.

Re:Catching them is a lot simpler than that

[hardburn]

But it's better to have AC going from the power station right up to the plug in your home.

Tesla would be proud.

Re:Catching them is a lot simpler than that

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the difference between a geek and a nerd is that a nerd has actually Read those science textbooks and the geek just 'knows' things. when you just 'know' things you get cocky and stop reading textbooks because textbooks aren't written with people who think they know everything.
And everything I ever learned I learned from a Sci-fi novel, so yes I knew that you string a wire and a crystal and you get sound (or electricity) depending on if it was conventional radio, or microwave. The problem with microwave transmission isn't that it can't be done, is that what does it do when you beam in a gigawatt of electrcity in microwave through a high density cloud. Unless you have a minimum of 3 reception points hundreds of miles appart from each other and only need to transmit to one of the three you're eventually going to cause a tornado by hitting the wrong cloud. Or else have an interuption of power to the earth.

And in case you don't think that a giant gigawatt microwave beam couldn't cause a tornado... think of the physics involved.. a mass of rapidly rising hot air surrounded by high pressure cold air, the hot air cooling as it rises. Granted a storm cloud capable of creating a tornado needs to intervene with the microwave beam, but you can't exactly control where those kind of clouds are going to be floating around. Which is why you need to be able to target the beam to backup sites.

And since we're generating power on the moon it is Much easier to use superconductive cabling and nuclear waste dispsal is easy build a mine shaft and dump it -- no water table, no issue contaminating ground water. And since nuclear power is cheap (3 cents a killowatt hour prior to disposal costs) it makes a lot of sense to put them on the moon.

Why indeed!

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Can't you imagine? High powered, moon delivered LART of such magnitude... I could do away with Purity Tests... Do away with "Getting to Know You", put an end to "This virus will delete your hard drive, blow up your computer and a$$ rape your dog"...

Not to mention, I could rule the WOLRD! I'll show them! They all laughed, but I'll show them!! I'll show them ALL!!!!

mmmmuauahaAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA*cough*ahem*err... sorry.

Re:Why indeed!

[isotope23]

"Not to mention, I could rule the WOLRD! "

yeah the would be hard......
much easier to rule the plain ol' world IMO

mmmmuauahaAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

Re:Why indeed!

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

WELL! I'll be damned... and most likely I will. But there is nothing like a good typo to make your day complete.

Re:Why indeed!

[Schaffner]

>Not to mention, I could rule the WOLRD! I'll show them! They all laughed, but I'll show them!! I'll show them ALL!!!!

Remember:
You can rule the world, but if you lose control they'll take away your t-shirt.

q #1

[Anonymous Coward]

If the maser beam doesn't diverge too much faster than a regular laser beam, it shouldn't be a problem to focus it on a large antenna. Granted this is still a terrible idea. I mean, why not just build the thing in some out of the way location on earth? You'd have cloud cover, but wouldn't have to invest the extra 11.2 trillion dollars.

-Anson James Donovan
remembercarlsagan@yahoo.com

Reminds me a lot of an anime

[BWalint]

In the series Gundam X, there's a certain mech, the GX-9900, which has a satellite link to a solar power station on the moon which refracts microwave down to the mech to make big kerplowie boom boom destruction.

I'll tell you what this idea is called -

[Anonymous Coward]

Lunacy.

Moving Targets

[RNLockwood]

The moon revolves with an approximate 28 day period so the collectors would have to be placed all around the moon so that some would be illuminated at all times. Then the power produced would need to be routed to the antennae on the side the moon that always faces the earth. Meanwhile the earth is spinning so any one spot will get some power for about 12 hours with the peak power delivered when the moon is near the local meridian. Since the received electricity cannot be stored and the time a local area receives the microwaves is only part of a day, conventional power plants will be required. They could work at reduced capacity when power from the moon is available and save fuel costs but would still have to recoup capital costs.

Hmmmm...

Re:Moving Targets

[Zeelan]

This isn't all that much of a problem. Your not thinking of the power system like a network. Many ways to get power all put into one big network. All you would need would be maybe 8 collectors nears the pole's of the moon and then lines running from them to maybe two transmitter sites on the side of the moon that always faces the earth. YOu also don't try to aim for the earth... but at Sat's around the earth. They can they bounce the power from one to the other to distribute the power to anywhere in the world. The best way of doing this would be to put the transeiver on top of some silly mountian and then connect it up to the network that is already in place.

the obligatory joke off the phrase "lunar laser"

[Have Blue]

CHA!

Re:star wars on the moon? great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of a new moon? Guess which side of the moon is showing when there's a new moon.

Mirrors indeed.

SimCity 2000

[jabber01]

They won't focus it or route airplanes and satellites.. Those scorch marks across the city will be just a by-product of super-cheap energy. We'll all come to accept it, and after a while, we'll incorporate them into our rezoning and urban revitalization projects.

And hey, if Godzilla or a giant space monster shows up to terrorize the city, the beams will actually be a welcome sight.. Well, sound actually.. Sort of like the sizzle of frying bacon, only it'll be asphalt..

Re:And they should call it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that was some sort of hovercraft or something....
I don't think a hovercraft is going to work in a lunar environment, with the lack of atmosphere and all.

Why not just do it on Earth?

[Fizzlewhiff]

You'd have to worry about clouds and other atmospheric conditions. AZ has a solar plant that reflects sunlight to a tower to heat water to generate electricity. Didn't I just read another was going up in the Australian Outback? Building one of these on the moon just sounds too expensive, especially when there are other means of energy on earth that we're not using effectivly or at all.

The thought of this thing falling into the wrong hands and being used as a death ray also frightens me.

Re:"And we shall call it the 'Alan Parson's Projec

[Anonymous Coward]

And we should call it "the Death Star".

shoot the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoot the moon! Shoot the moon!

Laser Asteroid Killer won't threaten Earthlings!!!

[PortHaven]

I'm sorry,...but I was just like uh *DuH*

Building a massive laser cannon, (and actually I thing a very large magneto rail-gun would be more effective) on the moon to target earth threatening asteroids in NO way would pose the possibility of being used on the peoples of earth.

Think about it folks, you build it on the far side. It CAN'T HIT THE EARTH then. However, all you need is one lunar orbit around the earth to allow for targeting of any threatening object.

I think it a wise move. GWB talks about a national defense. But we've never really talked about a planetary defense.

Anyways, i think it'd be pretty cool. And gee, it'd be the one case that we could build a very powerful planet destroying capable weapon and not have to worry about using it on ourselves. (Not unless you've got one helluva set of mirrors.)

Giant lasers for space debris

[Anonymous Coward]

...can't blast anyone on Earth if you put them on the dark side of the Moon.

shoot the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

shoot the moon! shoot the moon!

Re:And they should call it...

[tmhsiao]

Umm, all of you moderators modding the "Alan Parson's Project" posts offtopic, it's a reference to the second Austin Powers movie.

Bush

[t_allardyce]

giant lasers set up to blast incoming space debris and not, of course, anyone here on Earth.

Whatever, just don't, what ever you do, let Bush have the key.

Bush: "Proffesor Leibstrom. activate the laser beam, i want to play space invaders!"

efficiencies?

[isotope23]

"and efficiencies around 80% were measured"

isn't that higher than with traditional long distance wired transmission?
I seem to remember somewhere that only about 75% of power sent over long distance lines comes through......

Seems to me that the power companies would already be using this to move power around the grid....

Re:efficiencies?

[Spamalamadingdong]

The efficiency doesn't include conversion TO microwaves (which you have to do anyway). Besides, long-distance transmission via microwave would require an infrastructure of orbital reflectors, which would be expensive to develop and have significant uncertainties. You can imagine how eager utility companies are to do this, when the costs of right-of-way and wire and towers are well-understood and easy to explain to stockholders and auditors.

Re:efficiencies?

[leucadiadude]

"isn't that higher than with traditional long distance wired transmission?
I seem to remember somewhere that only about 75% of power sent over long distance lines comes through......"

Sorry, properly designed 500kV and 1000kV lines are greater than 99% efficient.

Imagine the I2R losses at 75%.... 25% of 5000 AMPS at 500kV would make a LOT of heat.

Oh, my...

[Anonymous Coward]

...one hopes that MS wouldn't get the embedded OS contract for such a system. Imagine how quickly Scott McNealy [sp?], Linus, Ray Noorda, et al., would be burned to a crisp

Isn't this like the Death Star?

[johns713]

Know I know Star Wars is fiction, but the idea of a planet (well moon) sized object firing a huge beam of energy was what the Death Star was all about. And with the US already talking about Star Wars programs, can a Death Star be far off?

Re:Isn't this like the Death Star?

[Dermot the Forg]

Is the government funding Dr Evil's "Alan Parson's Project" as well?

As with any of these pseudo-scientific things...

[SetupWeasel]

Remember that no human has walked on the moon in 25 years, and while they were there, astronauts did "advanced moon things" like picking up rocks and playing golf and not building a habitat that could sustain life for more than 3 days.

I want to see some of these lazy-ass theorists postulate something useful like building a space station that's worth the money we spend. Yipty-freaking-do! You can go to the ISS, live for 6 months, and do science (play with toys)!

Listen up, NASA. If you can't build anything with a space station it is just another Mir or Skylab destioned for "decommissioning" in fireballs over the Pacific. Long-term planning is not pie-in-the-sky postulating, however much slashdot thinks it is.

Here is my plan:

1) Build decent Space Station around Earth with *construction capability*. It doesn't have to be great at first. You could use it to build a better one if it isn't good enough.

2) Build reliable Earth-Moon transport.

3) Build decent Space Station around Moon.

4) Build decent Moon Station.

5) Then (and only then) think about stupid Moon Weapons and Power.

A couple of geeks in a room postulating about moon weapons is not science no matter how much they are paid for it.

Lunar power stations have day/night cycles... duh.

[Dr. Zowie]

The main problem with solar power systems, at least in places like the Mojave Desert where they've actually been deployed, isn't weather. It's the day/night cycle. You only get about 1/3 of the peak power of the system, on average, even in perfect sunlight. That's because the collecting area is rotating (with the Earth) and almost never has an ideal presentation angle. Then, of course, you get NOTHING during the night, when the Earth is between the collectors and the Sun.

These lunar systems will suffer from the same problem: at most about 1/3 of the peak collecting power will be available on average. Rectennas are pretty cheap compared to solar arrays, but it seems to me that each joule you make on the Moon and beam back to Earth is a pretty expensive one.

Never mind that the beam has to track stations and (to prevent wasting the resource during night from the first receiving station) has to jump between receiving stations that are widely separated in longitude. Lots of opportunities to screw up and irradiate populated areas.

The proprietors say the microwaves are perfectly safe for people -- but the government guidelines for microwave exposure are based on bulk heating effects, not on any special physics from the waves themselves. That's a bit fishy in itself -- but what about places like hospitals that are filled with sensitive life-support equipment? I can imagine Homer Simpson on the Moon accidentally beaming New York and killing thousands of pacemaker owners and hospital patients.

Gawddanmed right!

[isotope23]

And if you say that to my face I'll
happily punch you out to prove my ownership!

ALL HAIL King Leonus Loonie of Luna!

Super-Sized Star Wars On The Moon

[Lord Bitman]

"That's No Moon."
"Yes it is."
"Oh, so it is."
"Like I said."
"Yes. Uhm. Anyway,,,"

Use gas then

[sulli]

Well, presumably gas won't have run out by the time it's expensive enough to make solar (or this cockamamie moon idea) cost-effective. Why not keep the gas plants around, and when voltage from the solar collectors dips, turn up the heat?

Problems

[saider]

Has anyone built a 100% automated large scale power plant? Even here on Earth, such a task is daunting. Saying that it can be easily done on the moon, and done cost effectively is like saying that I could build cheaper cars on the moon because my machinery will only have to cope with 1/6th of the gravity.

"But satellites and the space shuttle use solar power all the time." They also have either a 5-10 year lifespan or are serviced regularly. The article said that it could be profitable in 5 years. So when it finally becomes profitable, many of its components will be nearing the end of their lifespan. Then you have to chunk down some more money to build a replacement.

Nevermind that there will still need to be multiple ground stations in remote areas to catch the radiation. The moon is not geosynchronous. Build a station at the poles you say? There goes your costs again. Also, say what you want about safety, nobody will want to live near these things. And they will have to be in different countries which brings politics into the mix.

This is pie-in-the-sky dreaming. If you ask me, I think the money is better spent designing and running a good nuclear power plant or for some fusion research.

Re:Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at cancer rates near nuclear power plants before you talk about building more of them. Nuclear power is anything but clean or efficient. Most people want it to work so badly that they ignore the facts.

Interesting article abstract

Article list

Re:Problems

[cybercuzco]

The Space Shuttle does not use solar power, it runs on fuel cells and batteries. The bay doors of the shuttle have radiators on them, not solar panels.

Skr1pt K1dd135

[Afrosheen]

Just wait until the script kiddies hack this thing.

I can see the headlines already. "An unknown hacker has siezed control of the lunar laser array and has etched 'n1nj4 b01 0wN2 j00' on the whitehouse front lawn. Investigators at the scene said it looks to be some kind of terrorist code. Afghanistan has begged for mercy, but we sent some bombs just in case."

What "light side of the moon?"

[Galvatron]

The term "dark side of the moon" refers to the side pointed AWAY FROM THE EARTH, and has nothing to do with whether or not the sun is pointing at it. The moon has a normal night/day cycle, lasting 28 days (this is also the length of one transition from full to new moon and back again. This is not a coincidence).

Didn't you ever see/read 2001? The lunar monolith being exposed to sunrise is a critical plot element.

Re:What "light side of the moon?"

[SectoidRandom]

The moon is in an orbit that as you said means we only see one side of it. Obviously since we see full-moon's / eclipses and all in between, that one side that we see does also see darkness.

But it is true that parts of the poles of the moon are almost eternally in the sunlight..

Re:As with any of these pseudo-scientific things..

[glwtta]

I presume you gather most of your information on how orbiting space stations work from playing "Homeworld" at least you brilliant to-do list makes it seem so.

What exactly do you know about the science being carried out/planned for on ISS?

Why do you think that building an unmanned power station on the moon is more difficult (or less useful?) than building a "decent moon station"? (brilliant criterium btw, why didn't those NASA geeks think of making stuff "decent"?)

Lastly, who on Earth (literally) needs a (once again decent) space station orbiting the moon? Communication satellites I can see (and I believe those are in the works already), but what possible use does a space station have over there?

And I am going to be calling it...

[CYberPhreak]

The Alan Parsons Project...

Mini-Me, stop humping the laser...

I don't know why...

[sirgoran]

But for some reason the Christmas Story is running through my mind when I was reading this.

Let's see...
A big mother power plant on the moon beaming back the energy to the earth.

My Eye!! Ow! My eye!!

So what is to protect the area around the earth-bound receiving station from "leekage"?

Wouldn't there be a huge possibility of damage from any waves that "miss" the receiving station?

I'm sorry, but I just know that somebody is going to put their eye out with that thing.

Goran

Re:I don't know why...

[PMM]

dont be such a fucking pansy - smarter people than you would design it

the only danger would be for some dumb hick in his flying segway crossing the path of the beam

Re:I don't know why...

[Afrosheen]

I imagine if the receiver is placed in a third world country, it will become known as 'the magic cooking spot'. People will flock to it in droves to microwave pizzas.

Nobody's gotten this right yet

[Spamalamadingdong]

1. How will they focus the beam on receptor antenas?

There are some pretty simple ways of doing this. One is to send a "pilot beam" from the receiver to the transmitter, and use it as a phase reference. Using techniques of phase reversal (see this guy's bio) you can create a coherent beam at the other end of a "lumpy" medium like wavy glass (or the ionosphere, or a chicken [see the bio]).

2. How will they keep airplanes from flying across the beams?

They won't; the beam intensity isn't sufficient to be a problem. It just struck me that it would be ideal to locate airports in the middle of the receiver farms, because that will keep development from encroaching under the approach and departure paths and creating noise problems and threats to persons on the ground from crashes.

The only way for this not to harm you would be for it not to strike you. Early radar technicians learned about microwave cooking standing in front of such beams

There are easy ways to avoid it striking you (a wide-brimmed tinfoil hat might actually have usefulness against something in the real world). The best is to make sure it can't go anywhere other than where it's intended, using a technique like an encoded pilot beam. Turn off the pilot beam, the transmitter no longer has a phase reference, the various transmitter sections go incoherent, the power gets radiated all over the sky and falls to minuscule levels on Earth.

Re:Nobody's gotten this right yet

[tooth]

If you locate them in airports, what about people who work in the airport and have long term exposure?

CDRH?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Canadian Dept. of Retinal Health?

Re:CDRH?

[aethera]

Center for Devices and Radiological Health, a division of the US Food and Drug Administration. They regulate all lasers, medical, entertainment, scientific, even the laser diodes in you cd player, in the US.

This guy knows what he is talking about. Sure targetting with a single laser beam would be hard, but add a pair of galvonometers to scan a dense grid over the entire plane wouldn't be two hard, and even with the drop in exposure from scanning the beam, 1 or 2 watts would be more than enough to temporarily blind someone, even at a reasonable distance.

Assuming pilots do actually look out the window during final approach (seems somewhat likely) I could probably achieve this with $5k in parts..assuming I stole nothing and didn't already have most of that equipment already. Solid state laser and the whole device would be shoebox sized. Gas-ion laser, I'll probably need a van for a small gas generator for power.

True, but the poles might get 24x7.

[Thag]

True, but I remember reading that there are areas at at least one of the lunar poles that get 24x7 sunlight.

Jon Acheson

Re:True, but the poles might get 24x7.

[WolfWithoutAClause]

The beaming antenna would have to be >10km high in order to send the beam back to the earth. And even then what about the half of the earth that can't see the moon at any given time?

Yes, but...

[ZaMoose]

...what if Chairface Chippendale gets ahold of this? Will he still try to write his name on the moon? Or will he use the moon to write his name on Earth?

My editor shitlist

[Chris Burke]

Michael, Jamie, and Roblimo are all jerks, though of the three evils I think Jamie is the least. Specificaly Michael for censorware.org, and Roblimo for posting his inflamatory opinions on the front page of /. and then disabling comments. Those two guys are real assholes.

Taco, Hemos, and CowboyNeal are alright by me. They're big geeks that post like big geeks, and that's why I read this site.

Do I have to?

[glwtta]

Yes I do: Just imagine - a Beowulf cluster of these! :)

Sorry.. can't help it..

[Ogerman]

All your "moon base" are belong to us!!

yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me set you straight, you cheese-swilling surrender-monkey. Just imagine when ObL jr and hsi space terrorists melt the Eiffel Tower with that moon-based giant laser. I bet you'd still claiming that he's a good guy, just a bit misunderstood and deamonized by the Amerikan Media.

Wil is behind this!

[interiot]

Wil Wheaton's interview:

• BBspot (11): Tell us why you're doing WilWheaton.net and about future plans for you and the site?
  
  

  Wil: It's all part of my Bavarian Illuminatti-driven plot to rule the world. Now that you've read that, we're coming for you with our Orbital Mind Control Lasers.

You're behind this, aren't you Wil?

Two risky for national security

[Mean_Nishka]

All it will take is a 'rogue state' to nuke the moon plant and we're all out of juice. Much too risky from a national security standpoint if you ask me.

Re:Two risky for national security

[glwtta]

Well, was anyone?

(just couldn't resist, as usual)

Re:Oops, should be TOO risky for national security

[Mean_Nishka]

And to think I'm an adjunct college professor.. Time for more coffee.

Fund it with advertisement

[puz]

A trillion dollars? Easy! Fund it by selling ad space on the moon to the highest bidder. For example, if it were McDonald's, draw a big golden arch on the moon with laser. Every night when people look up the sky, they will feel like eating hamburger.

Re:Fund it with advertisement

[greenfly]

Kinda like the second episode of The Tick where Chairface Chippendale wrote the first part of his name on the moon before being thwarted by the Tick?

The funny thing was that they left that writing on the moon for all the subsequent moon shots on that show.

A whale of a lot better than average sunlight

[Spamalamadingdong]

So you'd need a close to 100% efficiency for a rectenna just to break even with photovoltaic cells (from a surface standpoint).

Average != peak. The rectenna is going to crank out a lot more juice under conditions of cloud and fog, and infinitely more at night.

FAWKIN' psuedoscience troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Criswell "..."vibrational frequencies "

Sheeeeit, next you'll be claiming you can cure cancer with radio waves and have a optical microscope you can see viruses with! It's true, I heard KARNAK predict it!

"Blasting People"

[Kozz]

It's quite a silly comment, "... set up to blast incoming space debris and not, of course, anyone here on Earth".

Even if the laser were powerful/accurate enough to do this, why "on earth" would we use an insanely expensive weapon such as a lunar-based laser to strike a target on the ground? It's simply ridiculous when you consider that there are far more cost-effective ground-based ways to do this. Anyone who talks about using these from space, I think, has not considered this.

Why bother indeed?

[SysKoll]

If this is so, then why bother with this system at all?

Well, considering the price of industrial real estate, the cost of an Earth installation is still staggering. A space installation, as you mentioned, is more efficiently (no night, no weather). If the cost of a high power space-based microwave beamer system is reasonable, then it makes sense.

But first, of course, we'd need cheaper space access cost. The cost of lift-off per kilogram that NASA can offer is heavily subsidized, and even so, it is totally prohibitive. The ruinous shuttle has to go, and some form of price-lowering competition has to take place. We are still very far away from this.

Still, when you see the cost of orbiting even an experimental microwave beam plant, you wonder if we'd not be better off investing this pile of money into, say, fusion research.

-- SysKoll

Robert A. Heinlein

[finalrain]

Yeah, Robert A. Heinlein wrote it. Basic plotline: Manuel Davis (computer geek) finds out that the Lunar Colony computer system (Mike) is sentient and convinces Mike to help him free the colony. It's a very liberterian work. I enjoyed it ;)

Re:Robert A. Heinlein

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Joseph bin Stalin wrote it. Basic plotline: Osama bin Davis (computer geek) finds out that the airline computer system (Mike) is sentient and convinces Mike to help him fly airplanes into the citadels of the Great Satan. It's a very liberterian work. I enjoyed it ;)

Politics

[JetPet]

Why should they back out now then? Why not wait until they actually can use the lasers for shooting down nuclear missiles? Politicians aren't honest like that!

Remember RoboCop?

[NanoGator]

There's an OCP news segment about a Star Wars satellite based laser misfired and instanly scorched several acres of land in California, accidentally killing 2 former presidents.

That alone makes me a little spooked about mounting lasers in satellites or on the moon.

Re:Remember RoboCop?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm deathly afraid of automated policing robots. What if you can't turn off their kill commands?

Are they calling it the Alan Parsons Project?

[Life Blood]

Ass.

in other news...

[stinkydog]

Since the Lunar power Station came online...

Aluminum Hats a no longer for wackos

Check out those Northern Lights (in Florida)

Forget four poster bed sleep in a faraday cage

Metal Orthadonics fall out of favor

Peeps rise up from their cellophane prisons and attack their masters

Floresencet Lights no longer need to be connected to the power grid

Just because we can does not make it a good idea.

old idea

[Lumpy]

NASA toyed wih the idea of microwave solar sattelites back in the 70's and 80's. several mock-ups were even made.

they just wondered what would happen when a sattelite got misaligned and cooked a small town in iowa and then canned the idea.

Problems, see Sim City 2K.

[KhanReaper]

Well, I know this a bit lame:

Now, what ever happened in Sim City 2K when the microwave missed the target?
Zzzzth. Zzzzth.
Oh, woops, the city is on fire now.

On the serious side --pardon my lack of technical knowledge here, but what would happen if the beam missed?

Basic Orbital Dynamics (duh!)

[Guppy06]

"a sort of super-sized Star Wars program on the Moon, giant lasers set up to blast incoming space debris and not, of course, anyone here on Earth."

Does the phrase "tide locked" mean anything to you? The moon's rotation and revolution match each other, so anything set up on the far side of the moon to target incoming debris will never be able to hit earth-based targets, or at least not any time this eon.

Re:Microwave (OT, sorry)

[CoolVibe]

Uh, yeah, I've been here for quite some time. Check my user id :-)

(posting without +1)

Geesh

[jmu1]

Doesn't this seem obviously flawed? Beside the fact that they could kill anyone/thing they wanted, just think of what would happen if they put a nuclear power plant on the moon... and then had a meltdown. All of the oceans on Earth would go nuts, and all of the folks who live in the Rockies and the Appalachians would have nice, poluted with dead people ocean-front property. Man, the foresight of these guys!

With a MASER

[decipher_saint]

With a MASER would I be able to cook a turkey at 40 paces? ;-)

Oil companies have nothing to do with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you believe in the squelched patents for 300 mpg carburetors and levitation boots? I guess so!

The reality is that the oil companies have nothing to do with the viability of these options. Rather than being "panaceas" kept down by a conspiracy, each of these solutions has major drawbacks in terms of cost (solar) or environment (hydro). Time to stop ranting and start thinking!

Remember SimCity?

[RoyalTS]

Microwave power plants? I remember those from Sin City... the beam never really went where it was supposed to and burnt down half of my town...

Moon power

[Anonymous Coward]

All I can say to you pathetic creatures is, imagine a beowulf cluster of these.

That was all I had to say.

Re:Moon power

[Anonymous Coward]

Very good, ratbrain !

Can you imagine... a Beowulf cluster of giant lunar LASERS SHOVED&nbspUP&nbspYOUR&nbspASS?!!!

Get real, man!

[evilpenguin]

Microwaves pose real problems as a means of energy transfer. I suggest copper wire. Some of those orange heavy-duty extension cords from Home Depot, for instance. They're durable and affordable. Be sure to unplug them when they're not in use. And be sure to have enough slack so dangerous trasfers of angular momentum don't take place. It would really suck if the earth started spinning twice as fast shortening my sleep AND the moon came crashing into the earth's surface.

Let's hope those engineers have thought of THAT!

"only a few square km"

[mbessey]

I really doubt that you can focus a beam of microwaves with a reasonably-sized dish on the moon, and have it spread only to a couple square km over a distance of 100,000 Km. (That's about the right distance from Earth to Moon, isn't it?)

If only I hadn't slept through that explanation of diffraction all those years ago... Does anybody here actually know the math?

-Mark

Re:"only a few square km"

[Mr_Dyqik]

Diffraction angle is given by the wavelength (about 1cm) divided by the size of the aperture(d), so 1cm/d has to be = 1000m = 1km.

So with a 1km dish (not unfeasible, given the lack of wind on the moon, and 1/6th of the gravity), you can get a beam ~1km^2.

There's probably meant to be some multipliers in the above, but I don't care about them.

South Park Connection

[Smegma4U]

Was I the only person who saw the term "rectennas" in the article and thought of the antenna that was in Cartman's butt in the first episode of South Park?

Damn, those guys are prophets!

moon lasers!

[NoInfo]

oo! oo! blast me! blast me!

Or burn coal???

[Anonymous Coward]

Please support Molson Canadian.

Re:Laser Asteroid Killer won't threaten Earthlings

[Asgard]

There was a SciFi book about this. Far side of moon, etc... everything was fine until someone launched a rather large mirror that allowed the beam to be bounced back to earth.

Some Early History of Criswell's Lunar Solar Power

[Baldrson]

David Criswell hired me to do some unrelated consulting during the mid 1980s at the California Space Institute, in part because I was sort of hanging around there anyway as an amateur generally interested in space power, space industrialization, etc. The then editor of Space Power, Andrew Cutler (also the person who encouraged me to take Presidency of and reconstitute the San Diego Chapter of the L5 Society), was also at the California Space Institute working on lunar materials processing. Cutler had a running, sometimes acrimonious, disagreement with Criswell on whether space solar power would be more economically gathered in space or on the lunar surface. The dispute was never fully resolved to the satisfaction of anyone to the best of my recollection.

As best I can recall them, the basic engineering variable traded off were:

• Lofting material off the moon.
• Losing solar exposure for 2 weeks out of each month on the lunar surface.

This has been hashed and rehashed a number of times and it would be very good to have a special conference or online debate directly addressing how one might do economic models that predict which approach is more viable, not just from an operational cost point of view, but from a development-risk or time-value-of-money point of view.

PS: February of 1982, Jerry Pournelle posted the first Usenet article on David Criswell's lunar solar power proposal

Lasers + Moon = GI Joe episode

[t0qer]

I seem to recall an episode where snake leader carved his face into the moon so everyone would know that serpantor was everywhere.

Completely ...

[Anonymous Coward]

luny; total lunacy. :-(

Alan Parsons Project

[Mr.Mean]

An Evil Laser????

What pointless political games.

[Anonymous Coward]

What pointless political games.
There are no POINTLESS political games.

All the political games are played for money.

Until the burning of fossil fuel no longer makes money there will be no desire to seek alternatives.

mini me!

[doooras]

mini me!! stop humping the frickin' "MASER"

Beowulf

[treellama]

If only we had more than one moon...

can you imagine...

[doooras]

a beowulf cluster of giant lunar lasers! hehehe

Re:my first poster

[socokid]

Every part of the moon sees light from the sun as it rotates. The DARK side is simply the side that is dark AT THAT TIME, just like there is a dark side of the Earth at all times.

The FAR side of the moon is the side that we never see, as it rotates FACING the Earth.

Meteors

[Cadderly]

There are a LOT of meteor impacts on the moon. Because there is no atmosphere there, the meteors would not burn up and destroy the solar panels in a month...

all your...

[doooras]

All your giant lunar laser power plant are belong to us!!

There is no dark side of the moon...

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

"There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark."

nuclear power is free!

[peter303]

As they were saying in the 1950s. Was going to
put oil, gas and hydro out of business.
However the complex plants and environmental costs
made it as expensive as anything else.

Russia Supposedly Did This...

[nuxx]

Take a look here: http://www.afpc.org/rrm/rrm272.htm. A few years back, a Navy officer and a Canadian pilot were supposedly blinded by a laser shined on them from a Russian ship that they were observing.

-Steve

Microwave Cannon.... how anime style

[josh crawley]

f I remember correctly, the Microwave cannon was in the anime series of Gundam X.

"Is there a Moon?"

Josh crawley

and

[n08ody]

I'm sure Dr. Evil is filing a suit, since it was his idea to do this for. We must rasie a million dollars quick to stop him.

Asteroid defense

[hwilker]

I remember reading about some Russians who wanted to re-task their old ICBMs into a global SAM system (this would be "surface to asteroid", not "to air"). We don't need expensive, unreliable moon lasers to shoot down incoming rocks! We have enough expensive, unreliable missiles sitting in holes all over Siberia...

I remember this.

[Thingily]

This is the part in the movie where someone grabs the shoulders of the lead scientist and says, "Listen man! You don't understand what these lasers will DO!" This is usually followed by the scientist ignoring the warnings and the Earth plunging into a 500-year nuclear winter. Time to ready the bunker.

PErhaps

[mindstrm]

because we can much more efficiently turn that microwave radiation into electricity?

IT's a different frequency.. we can much more efficiently use it to transmit power.

Better Idea

[redcliffe]

If every house had solar panels on it's roof, they would be self sufficient in power. Then you would only need some wind plants and solar plants to feed power to buildings that don't have enough roof space to produce all their power.

Moon power plant

[Anonymous Coward]

Like some of you pointed out that it is a bad idea. Its better to spend that money to build Planetary power planet on Earth. How efficient would most of the energy beaming from the moon through space to the earth be? Would they lose 50% enegry to something.

This idea is obviously aim at the military and not a power plant at all. Imagine sending unlimited power to mobile army around the world, destorying enemy's Countries.

Most power weapon.

[Anonymous Coward]

They can build a freak'en large magnify glass on the moon and call it a freak'en Laser and point that on the earth and it would be like a magnify glass and a ant hill.

IT'S PERFECT!

[SnicklesTheElf]

"It is turning out just as I have forseen.." bellows Emporer Ashcroft.

Amist heavy breathing, Darth Cheney responds "Yes my master, the time has come to reveal our true intentions".

"Go my apprentice, take your plastic-suited broken body and show the world the true power of the Empire's Death Star!"

"Yes my master"

Why does this reminds me of...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Dr. Evil: And with this giant "laser" we'll hold Earth hostage for.....


.....one trilion dollars! Did't he also have a laser on moon?

As a materials base

[leonbrooks]

Why waste all that energy to go to the moon

Because it's heaps easier to loft material, and in particular steel, from the moon than from Earth. You also get near-vacuum conditions for processing stuff and better solar conditions (although you'd have to bootstrap with a nuke until the moon mine had its own solar power satellite because of that 336-hour day). Moon mines would feed earth-orbiting powersats, which then feed antennae on earth.

The microwaves arrive highly dilute, so the splash is actually less than for power lines, and defocusses rapidly anyway if it loses tracking. Using 1960s technology, it was feasible to track aircraft in flight and power them with microwaves. Today, we could probably target them well enough to warm individual passengers' coffee.

Re:"And we shall call it the 'Alan Parson's Projec

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon, this isn't "Off topic"!
It's actually the first thing I thought of when I saw the story! Dr. Evil up on the moon with his "Death Star", which is part of the "Alan Parson's Project". Never mind the simulation was a scene from Independence Day. ;-)

(Those that STILL don't have a clue, go watch Austin Powers 2.

go solar instead

[mj6798]

Instead of spending billions of dollars on some "loony" scheme like that, you are better off putting solar generators into deserts and storing and transporting the resulting energy as hydrogen (or feed it directly into the grid if you like). That can be done with today's technology, and it can be done incrementally. And you are much better off making sure that our energy needs don't "rocket".

It's kind of interesting to see how solar energy is considered some oddball tree-hugging thing when proposed on earth, but if it involves huge industrial and technological expenses and high-energy space lasers/masers, it is all of a sudden acceptable to a crowd of people that would otherwise don't give it a second look.

Watch where you point that thing...

[mariet]

You could put somebody's eye out!!!

Seriously, you point low density microwave (maser) emitters from the moon to earth... you use a BIG antenna here to pick up the energy, and you make sure the maser is aimed at unpopulated areas (though the critter should be detuned for resonant frequencies of important stuff like water, protein, myelin, cellulose, stuff like that.)

With the maser detuned for living stuff, it would be of relatively little consequence to living critters. Since microwave get's through the atmosphere better than most light frequencies, you can convert all that light into microwave, and you lose relatively little in the trasmission. Much better than trying to shoot high intensity laser to earth.

By the way... anybody who wants to build an asteroid blaster on the side of the moon facing earth... is not your friend. Explain to this person (with a large blunt instrument) that high energy beam weapons pointed earthward make really poor sense. I can almost see the generals getting wood at the thought...

By the way... anybody got an idea how to stop GW from building a half trillion dollar missile shield that almost certainly won't work (and that would be the good news.) That if successful would completely destabalize the world nuclear balance, almost certainly begin a new arms race, and almost certainly cause four and five star idiots drooling over the big red button the mistaken belief that tactical nukes could be a viable tool in enforcing American opinions on the world?!!! Somebody just needs to have a talk with that boy!!!

Re:Usenet in general

[Anonymous Coward]

Pave the earth!!
Chrome the moon!!! Chrome the damn moon!!
For God's sake chrome the f**cking moon!!

Airport exposure

[Spamalamadingdong]

If you locate them in airports, what about people who work in the airport and have long term exposure?

Metal roofs, reflective glass (we've already got that on most office buildings which is why it's nearly impossible to use your radio very far inside), place all parking beneath parts of the power receivers. People who have to work on the ramp or runways could use protective clothing; an aluminized-mylar poncho (solid or fine mesh) and a wide-brimmed hat with a layer of the same in it would do the job.

Dr. David Criswell

[GPS Pilot]

Anyone out there heard of this Prof. Criswell before?

Yes, I interviewed him in 1988. Go read some of his papers, he's brilliant.

Alan Parsons Project

[FrankDrebin]

DR. EVIL

Gentlemen, phase three. We place a giant laser on the moon. Let me demonstrate.

(beat)

Where's my laser?

Dr. Evil looks around and sees Mini-Me gnawing on the model laser. Dr. Evil takes it from his mouth

DR. EVIL

Mini-Me, don't chew my laser.

(to room)

Not feeling well. He has an ear infection, but tit's OK.

(pause)

No? Nothing?

(back to model)

Anyway, the laser is powerful enough to destroy every city on the planet at will. We'll turn the moon into what I like to call a "Death Star".

Scott SNICKERS.

DR. EVIL

What?

SCOTT

(snickering again)

Nothing Darth.

DR. EVIL

What did you call me?

SCOTT

Nothing.

(pretends to sneeze)

Rip-off!

DR. EVIL

(unsure)

Bless you? Anyways, since my "death star" laser was invented by the noted Cambridge physicist, Dr. Parsons. I thought we'd name it in his honor-- the Alan Parsons Project.

Scott SNICKERS again.

DR. EVIL

What now?

SCOTT

The Alan Parsons Project was a progressive rock band from 1982. Why don't you just name it Operation Wang Chung, ass?

DR. EVIL

(indicating laser)

When you get your own evil empire, you can call it whatever you want.

Gentlemen, allow me to demonstrate the awesome lethality of the Alan Parsons Project. Fire the laser!

53 INSERT SHOT:

A giant laser beam smashes down through the roof of the White House, causing it to explode.

Everyone is shocked by the laser's power.

NUMBER TWO

My God, Dr. Evil, you destroyed the Wihite House with no warning!

DR. EVIL

Actually, that was just footage from the 1996 blockbuster motion Picture Independence Day, but it would be a lot like that. What do you think, Scott?

SCOTT

Yeah, Codename: Thompson Twins was really impressive.