We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Solar Power conference in Florida Rand Simberg is live blogging the conference in Lake Buena Vista and from his initial description it sounds like all the players are there.
It is really not too difficult to understand why the military would find the idea of beaming power from space to a front line post a more appealing solution to energy requirements than driving trucks loaded with petrol hundreds of miles through ambush country.
Power from space starts to sound cheap when compared to a cost of as high as $200 per gallon for gasoline pumped into your Hummvee on the battlefield.
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Damn, but the deep greens will hate this. Problem solved, through the use of technology.
Beaming power from space has, in the past required a significant size of receiver here on the ground. I doubt the military is very interested in setting up a 20 acre receiving station in hostile territory as opposed to a diesel rig on a skid.
I’m sure the military would be more interested if the beam size can be reduced to “workable” size.
“Say, Mohamed, does it seem unusually warm today?”
Bill. Read the article. And besides what it says, I can confirm that the military is indeed interested in this technology.
And just so no one is confused by Bill’s statement: no one has yet beamed power from space. The ‘in the past’ he refers to only has to do with baseline designs for power stations built to provide baseload power for national power grids. A tactical power transmitter/receiver will be a bit smaller.
Thanks for linking to Rand’s blog on this. He’s doing a great job.
Things are moving in the right direction, combine this effort with Elon’s success and there may be real hope for our less than perfect species.
Why bother with Solar power?
Lunar power should do the job.
After all, there are so many politicians ‘mooning’ the public, there must be a way to make a buck out of it!