They don't mention what kind of energy beam. The second one seems to be from a dream world. They signed a contract to buy electricity in 2016, knowing full well there will be none in 2016 to buy. It's just for show.Pappa wrote:There's a couple of NS articles about beaming power from space here:
Pentagon backs plan to beam solar power from space
California gives green light to space solar power
It's still early days and would cost a lot more that a billion dollars, but I think the billion would be money well spent.
The critical problem is what kind of beam, and has it ever been used small-scale.
And how big and heavy is the beam-producing machinery.
I'd be very surprised if any of this was in use in 2036, let alone 2016.
It doesn't seem that the elevator idea is being taken any more seriously really.
The tether is the problem. It's a problem of weight versus strength, and I don't think they are within a factor of 100 of achieving a viable material.
And when they do, will it be cheap enough?
The nearest is carbon nano-tube technology, which is by far the strongest known, and nowhere near strong enough (yet).
And there is no known solution for passing safely through the Van-Allen belt yet, apart from rocket type speeds, which wouldn't be achievable with an elevator.
But even if you couldn't carry humans, an elevator would still be a huge advantage for lifting hardware.
It's odd that the Universe is absolutely bursting with wasted energy, but it's nearly all just out of our reach. In two or three hundred years, I reckon we will have vast amounts of energy for practically nothing, and robots that can work in any environment.
There must be alien civilizations out there that went through this stage thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago. What are they up to now?
I think I was born three hundred years too early.
.