I'm not Keith, but from what I've read about such systems, this isn't a concern: when they hit the Earth's surface, the microwave beam is very large so it wouldn't have a fatal effect on anyone or anything that happened to cross through it, though it might warm you up a bit. Also, the frequency is pretty important; microwave ovens work because they're tuned to the resonant frequency of water, which most of our food is largely composed of, so it excites the water molecules and makes them heat up. If the be
Yes, very low energy per given area can ensure safety. But that means absolutely huge receivers are required to get a useful power level.
To receive the kind of power levels we're talking about efficiently, you're going to need pretty damned big receivers. Luckily, they don't have to be large single physical structures - you'll have a rectenna array rather than one big one.
It works fine for every other kind of power plant, except they typically have to be sited on waterways, unlike a rectenna field. You're inventing objections which do not exist.
Microwaving power to Earth from space (Score:1)
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I'm not Keith, but from what I've read about such systems, this isn't a concern: when they hit the Earth's surface, the microwave beam is very large so it wouldn't have a fatal effect on anyone or anything that happened to cross through it, though it might warm you up a bit. Also, the frequency is pretty important; microwave ovens work because they're tuned to the resonant frequency of water, which most of our food is largely composed of, so it excites the water molecules and makes them heat up. If the be
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Yes, very low energy per given area can ensure safety. But that means absolutely huge receivers are required to get a useful power level.
To receive the kind of power levels we're talking about efficiently, you're going to need pretty damned big receivers. Luckily, they don't have to be large single physical structures - you'll have a rectenna array rather than one big one.
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Re:Microwaving power to Earth from space (Score:2)
A bunch of little ones all together, a smaller number of bigger ones, what does it matter? It still must cover a tremendous area.
It does take up a lot of space, but you can put it someplace crappy that nobody goes anyway and it doesn't look like much of anything.
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Good luck with that.
It works fine for every other kind of power plant, except they typically have to be sited on waterways, unlike a rectenna field. You're inventing objections which do not exist.
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Oh, by the way, are you aware of the scale of area coverage we are talking about?
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Oklahoma?