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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

Why would anyone do this when solar farms produce electricity at too cheap to meter rates?

The military are extremely interested in being able to power expeditionary bases without having to truck in diesel. It would be a game changer to logistics.

You could reflect light from the sun to places on Earth that are experiencing night.

Exactly, it's always sunny in space.

Also, a big part of the inefficiency in conventional power collection (in the case of solar) is transmission losses in the power lines. This converts light directly into microwave energy that can then be transmitted without power lines. That's a game hanger, just like wifi is to ethernet

High voltage power lines have losses of 0.5% to 1% per 100 miles. Beaming power from space microwaves would have a total loss of 40-60%.

And that doesn't include the cost (both money and carbon) of launching all the collection and transmission equipment into space in the first place.

High voltage power lines also cost $800k-$2mil per mile just to construct.

https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2019/10/11/....

Is efficiency that important? It's not like were delivering the photons to the solar panels like we use trains to deliver coal to power stations.

If we're talking military logistics, that may well still win out on efficiency over current methods. Even if it doesn't, it still has enough potential advantages to be game-changing.

Given how stodgy and variable WiFi tends to be, I'll stick with the Neanderthal way of copper lines.

Wifi is a marvel of modern technology. It's neither stodgy or variable. Maybe upgrade your stuff?

And it's becoming an obsolete idea. USB-C, 12VHPWR(the new power spec for NVIDIA gpus), and Tesla charging ports have communication protocols built-in to them to control power flow. More future power connectors are going to move away from the passive AC or DC flows we have now to dynamic connections.

The first generation of space power delivery is probably going to be passive as well, maybe a low power echo signal for target acquisition, but not complicated protocols to negotiate power or data flows.

because it's also a weapon, like a giant sized version of a kid with a magnifying glass.

Couldn't you just reflect it back?

not really, you can strike nearly half the planet in half a second (or however fast your mirror actuators are) so unless you put up reflectors everywhere...

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