OT: The price of Gas..

[Loser]

Originally posted by Kamog:
Hopefully, the satellites would transmit the power in the form of a tight beam, precisely aimed at the receiving stations on the ground.

It would have to, otherwise you'd lose so much that the technique would be useless.

The question is, where do you put it?

Perhaps it would be best to have three or four in equatorial geo-synch. That way, even on those rare occasions when one is eclipsed by the earth, you still have a significant percentage in operation. Additionally, this may make it easier to keep the beam focused.

Or you could put one huge solar energy collection structure in an orbit Trojan to Earth's (that is, Lagrange points 4 or 5 on Earth's orbit around Sol). This would have the advantage of being forever in direct sunlight, but would have to generate a truly Herculean amount of energy, as it would be the only thing supporting Earth and because it would lose so much over the distance.

In order to mitigate loss of power in the transmission, it would be best to use coherent microwave, or 'maser' (may-zer), technology. This is basically a laser, but in the microwave range of the spectrum.

The beam would need to stay precisely on target, as it would have a rather destructive effect on anything that got in its way, so the speed of light may limit this possibility. I'd ask someone else to do the math, because it's early here, but I believe there will be quite a few seconds of delay between Earth and a point sixty degrees away in Earth's orbit.

So yeah. Back to fusion.