Solar power with microwave transfer to Earth was first proposed I think in the 60-ies and was studied by US DOE in late 70-ies - early 80-ies. Other countries looked at it through the years. There's a number of problems that need to be solved: LEO solar power satellite would only spend a few minutes per pass over a ground based rectenna. A phased array antenna can increase it some. Placing satellite in higher orbit increases spread of microwave beam, there's a fundamental wavlength over aperture diffraction limit. Cost of antennas and rectennas was quite high but maybe not prohibitive these days. There were questions regarding power density that can cause non linear effects in ionosphere. Maybe these problems were solved since I looked at this many year ago :) BTW there were interesting studies about building solar power stations on the Moon
Wow, I thought that such projects are pure science fiction. The future is closer than I thought:)
Solar power with microwave transfer to Earth was first proposed I think in the 60-ies and was studied by US DOE in late 70-ies - early 80-ies. Other countries looked at it through the years. There's a number of problems that need to be solved: LEO solar power satellite would only spend a few minutes per pass over a ground based rectenna. A phased array antenna can increase it some. Placing satellite in higher orbit increases spread of microwave beam, there's a fundamental wavlength over aperture diffraction limit. Cost of antennas and rectennas was quite high but maybe not prohibitive these days. There were questions regarding power density that can cause non linear effects in ionosphere. Maybe these problems were solved since I looked at this many year ago :) BTW there were interesting studies about building solar power stations on the Moon
Cool. Could you share the link to those studies?:)