Slashdot Mirror
Japan Eyes Solar Station In Space
An anonymous reader writes "By 2030 [Japan] wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves. The government has just picked a group of companies and a team of researchers tasked with turning the ambitious, multi-billion-dollar dream of unlimited clean energy into reality in coming decades."
The real life systems distribute the microwave energy over a very large area... In the case of Japan, potentially an off-shore site that would pick up the microwave radiation.
...ever since I played SimCity 2000... But I don't want the beam pointing toward my head when I am not wearing my tinfoil hat!
Physics FAIL (unless your goal is to make your brains extra-crispy)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm wondering - does this take into account land costs of ground based solar cells, particularly in Japan?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Space elevators, orbital solar power station, and an orbital laser that can do massive damage with pin point accuracy. Just like you planned Japan, just like you planned. Now all you need is a bunch of rogue scientists building a base in a bunch of asteroids.
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
Wind and solar are toy projects pushed by rabid environmentalists' infectious propaganda; they very much realize how adoption of these power sources will force severe limits on human progress by suppressing energy availability.
There's no limits on human progress by using solar instead of dirty technologies like coal. However, no matter what technologies we use for generating power, there are limits on human population because of resources. Humans need to stop breeding like rabbits.
And I've no doubt that's exactly what they want--less technology, back to nature Ludditism and, especially, enabling a socialist reworking of human civilization.
No, we need more technology, cleaner technology, technology which lets us live better with nature (so we can still have nice places to go camping on vacations, and nice fish and seafood to eat that aren't filled with mercury and PCBs), and we need fewer humans with higher standards of living so we can enjoy our resources and manage them better, instead of fighting over them and squandering and polluting them. We also need fewer people so we can avoid more extreme forms of socialism. The only way to manage larger and larger populations of people will be socialism, and in particular the more nasty kinds that impose all kinds of limits on our freedoms. You can't have many freedoms when we're all packed together in ultra high-density housing; we'll have to have stricter rules and more government to keep us from killing each other, or keeping some nutcase from committing mass-murder. You want less government interference and more freedom? Work for a smaller population. Stop having so many babies.