Beamed power TO orbit?

<< OK. One space related idea I'm thinking over is the idea of
beaming power to orbit, rather than the other way around.
>>

This would be a good demo. It would demonstrate most of the difficult aspects of SPS, without the expense of building a huge solar array. Such an expeirment would generate a lot of useful data which could make it easier to build the actual SPS.

Such a system could also be immediately transplanted to the L1 point where it could act as a power relay from the sunlight side of luna to the unlit side.

Cheers,

CR.