SPS, Nuke waste, Mass Accelerators

> I am of the belief that, SPS is unworkable, and extremely dangerous.
>

Your belief is incorrect. At least, the "extremely dangerous" part --
it remains to be seen whether it's workable economically.

> Reasons, the power is to be downlinked via microwave beam.
>

Yes, much like the "microwave beams" used by cell phones and cell
phone towers (although those are omnidirectional).

> Attitude control thrusters jam, gyroscopes fail (in various manners),
> electronics get fried.
>
> These result (in the case of a downlink beam), drift.
>

That depends -- some arrangements require an uplink beacon in order
for the downlink beam to remain focussed. That's not a matter of
programming; it's in the physics of the hardware itself (as I
understand it). So, if the beam were to drift or the uplink beacon
were to shut off, the beam would immediately become defocussed.

Other designs don't require that, but it doesn't matter, as we'll see
shortly...

> There is no good reason, that I can think of, to risk, frying nearby
> villages, towns, cities, aircraft in transit, with a wandering high
> power microwave beam.
>

Here's your big mistake: the assumption that a beam would "fry"
anything. The power density of a SPS beam is about half that of
natural sunlight. You get more fried going outside on a sunny day.
The only reason it's useful as a power beam is that this light (unlike
sunlight) is of a frequency that's easily converted into DC current
with a simple wire mesh.

So, if you have a pacemaker in your chest or steel plate in your head,
you would probably want to avoid wandering into the beam. Otherwise,
you probably wouldn't notice it at all; at most you'd feel a bit of
warmth, just as you do from sunlight. (This assuming you're in the
beam yet not under a rectenna; under the rectenna, there is little to
no extra RF energy at all.)

The biggest problem might be keeping birds from building their nests
on top of the rectenna arrays, where they would find it comfortably
warm on chilly days.

> There have been radio and radar 'techs' that for some unknown reason,
> failed to understand that they were irradiating themselves when they
> were servicing such equipment during winter and noticed the warmth of
> the beam or proximity to the equipement, and stayed there to get
> warm. What's that? They are all dead? See if you can figure out why.
>

Have there? Please name one (or otherwise cite a source).

> So, that's nice, what do we do with the mess we have now?
>
> You do not put it on a rocket to send into space. Bad idea.
> Rockets tend to explode every now and then.
> Ever noticed that?
>

Yes, but it's not hard to make a small containment vessel that can
survive explosion of the launcher.

The big problem with space-based waste disposal is the exorbitant
cost. (Of course that may change in the future, especially if we
start building power sats.)

> Mass accelerators, keep in mind that if you punch something into
> space using wicked g's, it will no doubt ablate somewhat BEFORE it
> gets into space.
>

Er.... the vessel will. That doesn't mean the contents will.

> Mass accelerators, magnetic/electric systems are techo and neat, but,
> when gravity/kinetic/mass/recoil will do the same thing?
>
> Huh? you say.
>

I do indeed. That statement makes no sense (it's not even
grammatical, and I can't see how to fix it).

Best,
- Joe

Joe Strout
joe@...

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." -- Wendell Phillips