For Japan, I think $21 billion investment in windmills in the ocean would lead to more energy than creating a solar power station in space that sends back electricity in the form of microwaves.
It's an ideal country sized energy suicide weapon though.
Sort of a satellite born seppuku.
Also, think anti-ballistic missile defences -- no need for adaptive optics and all that jazz when you can swat the missiles with lasers from their most vulnerable position, right at the top of their trajectory.
Also, in all of the following keep in mind that we're talking about a re-entry vehicle here which has extensive heat shielding anyway just to survive its inevitable contact with the atmosphere.
It is more about energy density if this could be used as a weapon against an ICBM or not, the receiver of the energy would presumably be a fairly large patch of ground with a 'safe zone' around it in case of minor misalignment.
If you'd want your gigawatt to be concentrated in an area of 100x100 m under 'normal 'conditions you will not be able to quickly reconfigure to something on the order of a hotspot as produced by a battle laser (this is not a laser!).
In normal operating conditions and assuming they can beam as tight as 1,000,000,000 Watts per 100x100m patch (which remains to be seen) you'd have about 100KW / square meter, or about 10 W / square centimeter assuming absolutely perfect (so lossless) transmission and 0 reflection.
Microwave absorption of the ICBM would then be the deciding factor if anything happened to it or not, 10W / square centimeter seems a lot but it really isn't, the question is how long the beam could be focused on the incoming ICBM and how steady it could be held.
With lasers this appears to be possible, see this http://boeing.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=817 but it was an aircraft at subsonic speeds vs a stationary ground target.
Shooting stuff down that moves very fast is not that easy, especially not if your normal mode of operation is for energy transmission instead of destruction.
Unfortunately the people that launch these things are well aware of that, which is why if they are launched they are not launched 'one-by-one' to allow you to recharge your lasers between shots.
Another slight problem with the strategy is that any attacker capable of launching an ICBM at a country would probably also have the capability to hit that platform, and wich a 1GW radiated output it provides you with a really nice fat target.
All that would happen is you would make a hole in it, but since it's on a ballistic it would keep on going. (Ballistic means gravity is controlling it, it's not powered.)
Even if you blew it up, at best you would spread nuclear material all over the target area.
You need to hit these things during the boost phase, where a: you can stop it from going ballistic and make it fall back into the launching country, and b: you have something volatile to blow up (the fuel).
Also, it's easier. When it's at the apex it's moving horizontally very quickly, and it's at it's closest to you. Which is the most difficulty when it comes to aiming (since the angle of the shot is moving the fastest at that point).
When it's moving vertically toward you is much easier to aim, since you barely have to move the laser.
A high-powered laser won't just heat stuff up. If you can pump enough energy to small enough surface area in small enough time, the outer layer of the object being hit will be ionized. The laser will pump even more energy to this cloud of electrons and ions. For all intents and purposes, this cloud can be called an explosion.
Yes, I'm saying that when you hit a piece of garden-variety steel with a strong-enough laser, it will blow up and disintegrate into small pieces.
And even if the missile is moving very fast horizontally at the apex the movement is entirely predictable, even minutes into the future. All you need is two rangings, then you can just point the laser at where the missile is going to pass trough.
And anyway, you can predict the motion as soon as the motor is finished, you don't have to wait for the apex.
It's very difficult to aim the laser that well - even if you know exactly where it's going to be. Even if you were perfect in location and control, random atmospheric effects would mess it up.
The only practical way is via feedback loop, and when the angle is changing so fast it's very very hard to do.
You want a place where the angle doesn't change much, and all you need to do is adjust it based on feedback.
As far as destroying the missile - you need to pump enough energy into it to vaporise the entire thing. Normally an explosion will fracture the object near it. That cloud won't. You are moving very fast in air (even at the apex), and any ions will be blown away, plus they are only moving away from the missile, and not toward it, so they will not damage it. (They are moving away because they came from it, when they vaporized they bounced off the surface and away from the missile.)
You have to vaporise the entire thing layer by layer. And the energy in the cloud will not help you - since it's moving away from the missile it won't heat it, in fact it will insulate it (until it's blown away by the air) because all the energy of the laser will heat the cloud, and do nothing to the missile.
It's too easy to defend against a laser anyway. A small amount of water in the nose, released when it detects a laser will produce a cloud of water that will absorb all the laser's energy.
Not in a space based laser aiming at an ICBM at it's apex, it would be about 500 to 700 km depending on the trajectory, and doing about 14,000 km / h.
You couldn't do anything to a country. You could damage a small area if you concentrated it.
If the capture area is 4km, then anything on the ground larger than 2km x 2km would not even notice you doing anything (since it gets basically that much sun anyway). And with the losses (I estimate only 25% of energy is captured). You can radiate an area 1km x 1km without anyone noticing (which is about a city block).
To do damage you'd have to a go a lot smaller. It would take a very long time to do anything to something even city sized.
A space-based solution has a far higher cost to threaten; you basically need to have ASAT weaponry and that's (at least for now) somewhat out of the reach of non-state actors. Not to mention a space-solar satellite would have enough onboard power for some fairly aggressive countermeasures.
Edit: grammar
In both of these respects, it is exactly identical to NASA.
And yes, in Japan that is considered a practical spinoff.
PS: AIG has already payed back 9 billion of it's 80 billion loan, and expects to make another 25 billion payment fairly soon. Granted it's selling off assets to do this, but it's profit of $1.8 billion in the second quarter gives you some idea how many assets the company has. http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/20/news/companies/aig/index.htm...
The "cost" was the risk assumed by the taxpayers.
PS: The actual cost estimate of the bailut was probably upto 10% of the amount of money loaned. It's quite possible we will make money from this at which point talking about the cost based on the total loan amount would be silly.
The opportunity cost was enormous. The bailouts were a disaster for American capitalism. We now have a huge tattoo that reads "WARNING: Crony Capitalist Country. Proceed with caution".
Don't ignore the very difficult to quantify effects of the bailouts on the credit markets. The whole lesson will surely make the US a less credit worthy market and raise more questions about the dollar.
Me: Hmm, I wonder if I should spend $1,200 on a cheapish Dell or $3,000 on a Mac.
NASA: You should spend $300,000 on a NASA laptop.
Me: What kind of laptop costs $300,000?!
NASA: The kind built with space-age technology by defense contractors in redundant factories conveniently placed in every congressional district in America.
Me: But... $300,000!?
NASA: Its cheap for the price. You get a revolutionary new cooling system, suitable for working outside the atmosphere.
Me: But... I don't need to use it outside the atmosphere.
NASA: No, it has to be used in space.
Me: But all I need is a laptop.
NASA: No, a laptop -- to be used in space. Besides, once we're done with it, you can keep the cooling system.
Me: But if I needed the cooling system, I would have paid you to do R&D on a cooling system. I don't need R&D on a cooling system. If I did, I could get it a lot cheaper. What I need is a laptop.
NASA: A laptop... which can be used in space.
Me: Space is not a requirement! Space is something you add to the project because you wouldn't exist without space! Space doesn't add value! Space merely costs! Costs lots of money!
NASA: That's hurtful. Besides, the NASA laptop is cheaper than Social Security.
Me: I don't care what it is cheaper than! The frame of reference is not "other wasteful government programs"! It is "a laptop"!
NASA: A laptop, in space.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/TORU_dock...
I don't know the timing of space-based solar power, but if it matches demand, that's a big deal, especially if it isn't as weather sensitive as ground-based solar. (I don't know if clouds and the like are more transparent to sunlight or microwaves.)
Tidal power ends up attracting a lot of conspiracy theories. Why are we bombarded with news and policies about wind and solar when on paper huge tidal generation capacity is probably viable right now? There could be something there, I don't know.