Rated: 80% (2 votes)
Loading ...Gigantic Space Death Ray
Mark
On to the hyperbole a little later, for now, let’s see just how this thing is intended.
The idea of a solar-powered satellite gathering power to beam back down to Earth sounds like a pretty good idea, right?
Apparently, an orbital power station placed somewhere in space which gets constant unfiltered sunlight for a year could provide enough energy to power the entire Earth several times over.
Construction would consist of many reflective mirrors, each one measuring more than a mile wide.
Now, with all the debris floating about in space, I’m guessing that these mirrors would need some sort of protective shielding, but still, it’s a pretty cool concept.
The proposed 3000-ton behemoth, ten times heavier than the International Space Station, would require 120 launches to lift all its parts into orbit. Researchers estimate that even after overcoming that hurdle, the satellite could still pay for itself in a year after construction is complete.
So yeah, what with all the US government attention (and money) in this project, who’s to say that a giant space death ray isn’t on the horizon?
Never going to happen. Mainly because it’s too nice an idea. Nice ideas never get the go ahead and one or more counties would be worried about the death ray style aspects.
Still, very cool.
Agree with Adam. There’s a lot of speculation that Earth-based fusion reactors have been deliberately hindered because all the fat cats have their hands in oil production. If we suddenly came up with some ultra clean, free power source the world’s oil related economies would collapse.
Apparently this is bad but I don’t think it would effect that many people. I mean yeah we’d all have to use electric cars and cookers but the benefits are obvious. I’d much prefer to have a space based power source though.
Can visualise see George W Bush saying ..
“It’s time to demonstrate the power of this station…”
Ok, If people are stealing ideas from james bond (Anyone remember “The Man with the Golden Gun”?) maybe we should start making sure our volcano’s are not full of supervillains(”You Only Live Twice”).