

Military proposes $20B power satellite to shorten logistical tail. - mnemonicsloth
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,301479,00.html
Points for Discussion:<p>1. Too bad this wasn't proposed in the seventies.  Justification for a long-lasting commitment to building orbital infrastructure is just what the space program needed back then.<p>2. Is it better to have a semi-competent, underfunded, civilian space program, or a semi-competent, overfunded, military space program?<p>3. Isn't it neat to think that somewhere out there, somebody's "running a startup" with a nine-figure budget?
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daniel-cussen
From the report: "a single kilometer-wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit
experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy
contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth
today." Damn.

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iamwil
Yeah, but my first thought was, how are you going to get all that energy out
of orbit through the atmosphere to the ground without losing most of it?

Granted, I skimmed the article for this little tidbit, and all I saw was that
NASA said it was technically feasible, but not very economical.

I remember that E&M transmission through air lost power exponentially. Maybe
when they say 'beam', they mean an actual light beam. The space elevator is
powered by a laser aimed from the ground, so I suppose that's not entirely
infeasible.

