[LMB] Soletta (WAS: Chat - New Essay)

[Rachel Ganz]

Well, we may be able to have one of our own soon...

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/01/guardianweeklytechnologysection.research>
"The first units to go up will generate between 10MW and 25MW of continuous power, enough for a town of 25,000 people. If the energy is transmitted by microwave, a surface array one-tenth of a square kilometre in size will be needed to pick it up. Larger beams will require larger collector arrays. But wouldn't a microwave beam from space be equivalent to a deadly weapon? Unlike photovoltaic cells, these antenna arrays are practically transparent, so crops could be planted under them.

"If a 2.45Ghz beam drifted off its target and ended up over a town, the effect would be negligible," says Lt Col Damphousse of the space office. "By the time the microwave reaches the surface it has spread out considerably. The power density is one-sixth that of the noonday sun."

The US army could also use such a device to deliver electricity to its troops. Military units in forward areas pay $1 per kilowatt hour, six times the UK domestic price. They pay a lot more to bring in fuel. Lives could be saved by cutting long and vulnerable logistics chains - though it would require the large collectors."


========================================
 Message Received: Nov 01 2007, 08:57 PM
 From: "Joel Polowin" <jpolowin at hotmail.com>
 To: lois-bujold at lists.herald.co.uk
 Cc: 
 Subject: Re: [LMB] Soletta (WAS: Chat - New Essay)
 
 
 "James M. BRYANT G4CLF"  wrote:
 > In the first chapter of "Komarr" Ekaterin views the damaged
 > soletta and reflects that it used to look like "a snowflake
 > made of stars". This is not incompatible with 5000 mile mirrors
 > at a distance of a million miles or so - and at that distance
 > the mirrors would not be visible to be star-like against a day
 > bright post-sunset sky if they were smaller than 1000 miles or so.
 
 Hmm.  If the soletta is providing, say, 10% as much solar light/heat
 as Komarr would otherwise receive from its sun, shouldn't it appear
 to have 10% of the brightness of the sun -- which would be very very
 bright indeed?  (For comparison, our sun is ca. 449,000 times brighter
 than the full moon and about 649,281,000 times brighter than Venus.)
 I wouldn't expect the component mirrors to look like stars.
 
 Perhaps the mirrors are also converting visible light to infrared?
 
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Rachel Ganz

eleGanz technical writing and information design
rachel dot ganz at eleganz dot co dot uk

Brevity, clarity and cups of tea