Japan Wants to Power 300,000 Homes With Wireless Energy From Space

Japan Wants to Power 300,000 Homes With Wireless Energy From Space

www.popsci.com

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

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

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A test model is scheduled to launch in 2015, and the final version is expected to be finished in three decades.

A major kink, presumably, is coping with the possible dangers when a 1-gigawatt microwave beam aimed at a small spot on Earth misses its target.

If we put enough of these in orbit, could they potentially become weapons?

www.popsci.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Well it'd be one strong step to a type one civilization.

I don't know for a weapon though, but sounds good to me!

Although, every good has a bad. I'm sure a black hole will be made of it.

A major kink, presumably, is coping with the possible dangers when a 1-gigawatt microwave beam aimed at a small spot on Earth misses its target.

thats actually a trifflingly minor ` kink `

Hazardous Electromagnetic Radiation for Personnel (HERP) would be a related topic for anyone interested in this subject. There are some missile director systems that have a HERP range of 1200 feet from the high gain antenna. But these have a much lower power level than Japan is planning on putting into space...

www.phys.hawaii.edu...

I hope they do it.

When I hear about things like this, I love Japan

Good for Japan. A much safer version was already designed though. It was the Tesla tower. There's no need to spend billions doing something out in space to get the benefits of what has already been done on the ground, provided there's not another Westinghouse douche that can't make a profit

I guess there wouldn't be any problems that would effect anything traveling through it like a plane or a bird. I suppose they've already done tests as to it's safety.

Now that the western cabal backed LDP has been ousted by a landslide we can expect to see a LOT of good stuff from Japan as they quietly and politely slip out the tech they've been forced to sit on for decades.

It won't happen overnight but it's coming.

I've heard this before, its a good thing because you can harvest the sun 24/7 without energy being lost in its way through the atmosphere by the effects of reflection and absorption. Transfering it to earth seems another challenge but yes i thinkthey know what they're doing..
I had the thought before of collecting the sun's energy above the clouds with for instance a zeppelin but this is even better

Two things I know about Japan.

1. Do not trust Japan.

2. Japan wants to take over the world.

Originally posted by dragonsmusic
Good for Japan. A much safer version was already designed though. It was the Tesla tower. There's no need to spend billions doing something out in space to get the benefits of what has already been done on the ground, provided there's not another Westinghouse douche that can't make a profit

Yes for Tesla was a hero! The thing was JP Morgan was supposed to finance the thing but after he heard it produced free energe and had no meter cupboard he withdrew his money..the bastard...

The actual technology is impractical, I agree, and there's better stuff around. But the important thing is this is the beginning of the archives opening.

Aww but if this catches on, who is going to buy the carbon credits?!

This is the sort of news i want to hear,moving forward,thinking of different ways to do things better.
it's a bold plan & if they could pull it off it could be something amazing,if they mess i up it could be a potential major disaster in the making

If you ever played the ooriginal sim city 2000 on the super nintendo this exact power station was one of the options you had in the game to power your cities.

It was always a pain when the damn thing misfired though, as the fire it caused would rage pretty hard if you did not have adequate fire stations.

I would hope at least that Earth based facility has a few open kilometers of space to work with in the even that it misfires. Yes this can be used as a dual technology, but not really anything that will mox down a city like a nuke. If you hit a skyscraper with it probably just fry all the electrical equipment, cause a few flash fires and definetly anyone inside would not be in a good situation.

But you could not theooretically just start pointing and shooting, as alignment and such does take time to move around. Surely by the time the first shot was fifred, it would easily be incapaciated before it can hit a second target.

I think regardless of the the problems its a step in the right direction. First we must try before we refine, steam power was not without problems at its dawn.

Good work Japan!

reply to post by RoofMonkey


Dear god its going to give us all herpes!!!!! NOOOOOOO
just kidding i dunno i kinda like the idea but it does seem a bit scary if anything were to go slightly askew