The military's idea of 'Greening the battlefield'

[machI]

Why do systems of such potential benefit have to start out as weapons projects?


Pentagon Eyes Orbiting Power Station

Aviation Week's DTI | Frank Morring, Jr. | December 09, 2008

The concept of collecting solar energy above the atmosphere and beaming it to the ground as microwaves or lasers has long been seen among military freethinkers as a way to get electricity to remote airfields, fire bases or other distant outposts without having to haul fuel for diesel generators.

But that out-of-the-box concept may be gaining new life as the incoming administration looks for "green-energy" technologies to reduce reliance on foreign oil, and technologists home in on the hardware that would be needed to orbit deployable sunlight collectors measuring kilometers across and get power down from them to troops on the ground. Engineers studying space solar power (SSP) believe a pilot plant could be orbited fairly soon.

Mankins said a pilot plant delivering 5-10 megawatts "does mesh nicely" with a notional military requirement for a system to deliver power from space to forward-deployed forces. To meet the 10-year timeline for a pilot plant, he said, it would take another three years after the systems study to put together a flight demonstration in low-Earth orbit, and another four to six years after that to get a pilot plant in geostationary orbit.

Full article at:
http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,180854,00.html

[bananas]

1. Just like the internet, the federal highway system, and the national school lunch program.

http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com/