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Planned Constuction of Orbiting Microwave Power Station

Posted by Hemos on from the fun-with-solar-energy dept.

Fith writes "A small news item tells of a research project to build robots that will assemble and repair a gigantic orbiting solar collector. You'll have to scroll down a bit to find the section. Basically, power collected will be beamed back to earth using 'safe levels' of microwave energy. " This is a proposal that's been floating around for quite some time-vast LEO or HEO solar panel arrays, beaming the power down to earth. For those of you who played, Simcity2000, this was one of the power options as well. NASA hopes to part of this operational by 2015.

1 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Radiation & Brains by debrain · · Score: 5
    Last time I checked, the latest study on cellular radiation showed that people who used cell phones were more imaginative and intellectual than those who did not.

    That's somewhat interesting, but I've never seen the case study myself, and wonder what kind of control group they used -- maybe people who use cellular phones are simply more intelligent and imaginative and use phones because of that. My interpretation of what I was told (by an MD) was that the cellular radiation stimulates activity in regions of the brain where without the cell phones there would be none.

    However, the nice conclusion exists, given this premise, that microwave radiation that misses the target and haphazardly strikes people will benefit the overall IQ level of the country. Maybe we should target some high schools and examine the effects.

    Note: It has never been conclusively shown that cellular radiation increases the chances of brain tumours. I worked in a nuclear power plant -- the fear of radiation is greatly exaggerated, I assure you. Live in the average Ukranian basement for 8 months and you'll exceed legal Canadian doses of radiation (legal, not lethal :P).

    Radiation becomes a problem when it is in the form is acute doses -- high exposures in a short period of time. Just for the sake of a story: a fellow came into the plant (the Nuclear Power Plant) a few years back and set off the alarms on the way in. It was surprising to discover that the source of the radiation that set off the alarms was in his belly -- a result of him eating Caribou meat over the weekend when he went hunting. The Caribou were eating lichen off rocks, and rocks are radioactive, and hence the Caribou meat was releasing enough radioactivity to set off the alarms at our wonderful Nuclear Power Plant.