My sci fi novels (such as "It's Down to Earth" and "Building Up") have stimulated a bit of discussion on old and new topics, some of which can be contentious. A new friend who also is into amateur radio (as I am too) and thus aware of potential problems of high power radio beams could have and need to be made safe for all concerned, surprisingly brought up the old argument against the use of Solar Power Satellites in GEO, that the power beams might be dangerous for aircraft to pass through.
Dealing with the effects of flying through a gigawatt power beam going to a 12 square mile area rectenna (rectifying antenna) with a power density (although at a single frequency) about equal to that of sunlight, that much of the solution seems to just do like in other high energy transmission systems such as high tension high voltage power lines, establish an avoidance zone around them, no-fly zones for those beam areas.
Birds flying through them would probably absorb more energy than already absorbing from the sunlight, and unless there are resonant effects, or effects of doubling the heating from incoming energy that is not bounced off their feathers, so research would be needed re this; as to damage compared to the losses of birds and bats to wind turbine blades, another worst-case factor to be researched.
Even though aluminum-skinned aircraft would simply mostly scatter bounce the energy away from their curved metal surfaces, if they strayed anyway into the "no-fly" zones around space sourced power beams, except possibly for any resonant circuits it could pass to in the vehicle, and so aircraft would eventually need to be designed to avoid this frequency-dependent potential problem, or harden any such circuits to pass the sub-centimeter wavelength energy shorting it out.
As I envision the widespread use of such electric power beams, enabled built there such as by using my proposed economical transportation methods, eventually there might eventually be a hundred such 12 square mile no-fly-zone power beams going down to various places around the world. Additionally probably an equal number of much lower energy density beams serving smaller countries and isolated areas.
Regarding the subject of having an ill-will group take over such a power station and modify its beam to make it much smaller and use it as a weapon, it seems to me that the full sized such GEO-sited gigawatt energy transmitters would need to have their antennas designed and built to prevent such focusing down to smaller than the, say, 12 square mile receiving area on the surface of the earth. Wisely design and build them so they can't be used mischievously by the misguided, instead of attempting to use enforcement schemes, which history shows too often get taken over by the misguided who crave control over other people.
Smaller power energy satellites that would be used to deliver propulsion energy to tracked-position airliners, ships at sea and trains in some places, would need to shrink their power beams down to that which would be received by the much smaller rectennas on those vehicles; but the energy would be a closely controlled factor just as any large fast moving vehicle has much energy density that needs to be controlled so as to not run amok and cause damage, including at the hands of misguided aggressive folks who might attempt to take one of them over and use it to cause deliberate damage (not all humans have grown up yet, unfortunately.)
The way things go slowly in the rivalrous business world where the already existing powerful energy businesses (such as coal, oil, nuclear) and existing rocket-based space access system businesses, would strive to suppress such power sources and the new types of space access transportation structures (such as my proposed KESTS kinetic energy supported space escalator transportation system) needed to build and maintain them up in GEO, just to keep their business profits coming in; so probably by the time such space energy sources were fully in place, the wind turbines will have been worn out, that are needed built at the present time.
Such big business suppression of that which the world needs so desperately now - abundant cheap clean electrical power for the world and solar powered means to economically totally recycle toxic materials our industrial civilization produces, back into useful purified chemical forms - and maybe even huge new living space and easy access to asteroid mining potentials - does not make them evil or of destructive intent; they are just naturally wanting to keep their money rolling in without even a brief interruption to maintain their nice lifestyle they have established along with massive influence to control events; and to gain time to take over any such new power systems that might be built in the future, thus to be controlled by themselves in their own good time. Of course, such existing power corporations are the ones who have the wealth to quickly build such space-based clean power systems, but why bother when they already control as it is, without any more work and risk? Business profit is a hallowed thing in our culture, and most anything goes in that game.
Let's hope humanity can survive by somehow getting out of such narrow-visioned modes; we live in a big-picture wide visioned world, whether we see it or not. We are within reach of the technologies to wisely solve our problems, if we can stop quarreling and get on with solving our mutual problems and enabling efficient fulfillment of all our mutual needs to thrive far better on into the future.
Labels: aggression, aircraft, electrical power, KESTS, power beams, radio safety, safety, ships, solar power, SPS, trains, wind turbines
