Anyway you cut it this is nerd cool: Navy Plans to Beam Energy From Orbiting Solar Panels WASHINGTON—The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is building solar panels that would be used to beam energy back to Earth to power military operations, especially in remote areas where transporting fuel is dangerous and expensive. The plan calls for using robots to assemble the solar panels into a 1 km (0.62 mile) long reflecting mass. That would make the satellite the largest other than the International Space Station. The NRL has tested two prototypes of what it calls a sandwich module, which uses a photovoltaic panel that absorbs the sun’s radiation on top, an electronics system in the middle that converts the energy to a radio frequency and an antenna on bottom that beams the radio waves toward a target on the Earth’s surface. In a statement about building such a satellite, Paul Jaffe, a spacecraft engineer at NRL, said it is hard to tell if its nuts until youve actually tried.”
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 14:16:10 +0000
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