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Solar Power Transmitted From Orbit Down To Earth
Caltech's Space Solar Power Project has resulted in a successful transmission of energy gathered in orbit down to the surface of the Earth.
Wireless power transfer was demonstrated on March 3 by MAPLE, one of three key technologies being tested by the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1), the first space-borne prototype from Caltech's Space Solar Power Project (SSPP). SSPP aims to harvest solar power in space and transmit it to the Earth's surface.MAPLE, short for Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment and one of the three key experiments within SSPD-1, consists of an array of flexible lightweight microwave power transmitters driven by custom electronic chips that were built using low-cost silicon technologies. It uses the array of transmitters to beam the energy to desired locations. For SSPP to be feasible, energy transmission arrays will need to be lightweight to minimize the amount of fuel needed to send them to space, flexible so they can fold up into a package that can be transported in a rocket, and a low-cost technology overall.
(Via Caltech.)
As far as I know, the first science fiction writer to describe this was Murray Leinster in his 1931 story The Power Planet, published by Amazing Stories In 1931.
The Power Planet, of course, is that vast man-made disk of metal set spinning about the sun to supply the Earth with power...
('The Power Planet' by Murray Leinster)Only forty million miles from the sun's surface, its sunward side is raised nearly to red heat by the blazing radiation. And the shadow side, naturally, is down to the utter cold of space. There is a temperature drop of nearly seven hundred degrees between the two sides, and Williamson cells turn that heat-difference into electric current, with an efficiency of 99 percent. Then the big Dugald tubes - they are twenty feet long on the Power Planet - transform it into the beam which is focused on the Earth and delivers something over a billion horsepower to the various receivers that have been erected...
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