But just wait. Once the energy runs out, and the cars stop, and the food prices go up people will demand solutions NOW. And guess what, then we’ll start burning coal coal coal. Or mining hydrates. Or building more crappy outdated nuclear power plants. And then you’ll be gnashing your teeth we didn’t have a more sensible alternative.

I’m not aware of any peer-reviewed papers on this and any serious replication of his claimed results. From my investigation into the subject, Tesla wrote that anecdotal stuff as newspaper articles, and transmitting power through the Earth is highly inefficient, which is why the U.S. Navy abandoned Seafarer. I welcome any citations to the peer-reviewed science or engineering literature to counter that. Note that Tesla coils (which I have experimented with) generate nice indoor lightning, but have no known role in distributing power.

Existing technologies make this redundant:
Howard Johnsons Magnetic motor
Stanley Meyers Water fuel cell
Paul Pantones GEET carburetor

…plus the standard wind, solar, and water power technologies

Then there are the more efficient power transmission developments of Nikola Tesla which he discovered just after inventing the 3-Phase AC power system we use now. It was wireless too, using Tesla coils, pulsed DC, and resonance he got more efficiency than the current wired grid.

Re: “laser option would tear a hole in the atmosphere”: Could you cite a reference?

The other major blocker is that we have no means to assemble and maintain such large structures in GEO. We don’t have that many astronauts nor could that many be trained so quickly. Even if they could, astronauts do not work in GEO. It is much more hazardous and more difficult to support such missions. Nor do we have remotely sufficient space robotics for the task. Since it is GEO we don’t need autonomous robots for this. We could get by with tele-operated bots for many tasks. But we also don’t have those.

No I think 10 years to remedy either one of these problems, much less both, is very optimistic. Especially at a time of such economic turmoil.

the only way to transmit a directional beam is by laser , any kind of radio waves spread like ripples in a pond which means and just you mildly warm half the cosmos

the gigawatt laser option would tear a hole in the atmosphere like a never ending lightening strike , and no laser yet conceived come close to a death ray operating 24/7/365 for decades at a time without maintenance

nice idea guys , but its never going to work

Besides, what about risks on faulty dispersion over the ground? Would you bet it and accept to live nearby one of the recollection point? Anyway, the system has to be self locked and automatically turned off when the beam is moving outside the allowed perimeter.

This is all very nice but I prefer nuclear power!
What?
Oh, sure, not fission but fusion! Why are the progress so slow? Confinement of the plasma sucks, I know but it’s like nobody is interested anymore at mastering nuclear fusion SOON enough (i.e. in circa 20 years).

If you are wrong we are probably going to hell in a handbasket.

Wanna bet with your childrens lives?

1. chances someone or something on earth looting any solar cells or solar plants for copper or other rare Earth elements is quite a bit bigger than in space. Plus they’d suspend these things in geostationary orbits. Junk is rather relatively motionless at that orbit. Plants of this sort are far more vulnerable to wind, rain, lightning, corrosion, earthquake, bird poo, terrorism, bombing, vandalism, looting etc. etc. etc. on a planetary surface.
2. the deadlyness of resource depletion is exponentially bigger than solar platforms in space. Worse, IF these things were so deadly now there’s a good argument to have them in space before anyone else does, right? Quick, get one before North Korea or China gets one.
3. Invest xxxx$ in solar cells and you get a single gigawatt of electrical outpit. Next year you’d be competing against anyone else’s solar cells, flatscreen TV’s, inflating currencies and armies and you would pay more.
Over time more planetary solar only costs more and more and more. Maybe in half a century nano will make some difference, but we need those damn terawats NOW. Or in a few years. Now a solid investment in space won’t solve energy problems overnight and all these investments will cost a load of money as Uncle Giulio suggests. Probably more than we can afford at this stage. But the damn things will get cheaper as we order more of them. Solar investments on a planetary surface will only cost more and more as a function of time. Solar investments in space will cost next to nothing eventually. You can wholesale terawatts a dime a dozen a century from now.

Provided we don’t miss or opportunity and we screw it up getting stuck on this damn dirt ball.

Kurzweil previously forecast the opposite scenario of 100% solar energy abundance in 16 years given the 34 year trend of two year doubling times for solar cell production. http://bigthink.com/ideas/31635?page=all

Even if our energy needs double in that time, that is only two additional years before that need would be met too.

That is just the progress in solar. Considering all the other fields of energy development as well – don’t the trends strongly suggest energy over abundance rather than energy shortage?

The proposal is of 2002, and similar concepts have been proposed since the 70s, but I guess the key difference is “space solar power appears to be technically feasible within 10–20 years using technologies existing now in the laboratory; It appears to be economically viable…”

@bumpy1: like all disruptive technologies (for example the Internet that we are using for these comments), this has its own dangers and can be used also for bad ends. But I think the potential benefits outweigh the potential dangers.

Now even teh Kurzweil runs this story of SSPS. I am truly in a state of elated mirth’aciousness.

http://www.scoop.it/t/space-versus-oil