Transport of electrical energy through lasers and satellites.
2/10/2008 Solar Collector Satellites [Web]
Some Pharoz posts:
24/10/2006 Solar Farms [Web]
10/04/2006 Analog to digital energy transmission [Web]
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The basic idea is that the light from a laser made with a gas will be at a frequency such that the light from that laser can be absorbed by that same gas in a special cavity at a distance removed from the laser, and thus cleanly ‘catch’ the energy from the laser so to speak. While the resonant cavity used to generate coherent light in a laser might be small in volume, the volume of the catching cavity of a relay satellite would have to be big enough to ‘hold’ all the energy transmitted at one time. To mix metaphors, such a catching cavity would need to be lined with something that keeps the energy bouncing around inside, as with a thermo flask, and the lense through which the laser light enters the catching cavity would have to have a large shutter like a camera so that it can be open for only a short amount of time.
There would need to be a process within the relay satellite that in effect draws quality energy (preferably not thermal) out of the excited gas being held, and it would be something of a reverse process to that in the laser that pumps energy into the resonant cavity filled with that same kind of gas to start with. That last step of drawing out the energy in such a catching cavity once it has absorbed the energy from a laser would be the most difficult. I think the other steps could be readily achieved. If this last step can be realised efficiently in practice then you could use lasers as a medium for transmitting energy, at least in space. The terminology I am using here is crude but I hope this conveys the basic idea.
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