Beamed power TO orbit?

One of the Space Manufacturing conference papers ( I forget which year;
sometime in the '80s ) had an article on beamed power to orbit. The idea
was to use this power to transfer satellites from LEO to GEO. Such an OTV
(orbital transfer vehicle) would use highly efficient electrical propulsion
of some flavor. The mass required for the rectenna was deemed to be much
less than for an energy-equivalent area of solar cells.

Ron Menich

cfrjlr@...
08:11 PM
Please
respond to
ssi_list

In a message dated Mon, 18 Jun 2001 7:26:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Ian
Woollard ian.woollard@... writes:

<< 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.