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by mjevans
3701 days ago
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It is not unlimited. At the radius from the sun that our planet is, there is an upper limit to solar energy of about 4/3 Watts/(M^2) (projected across the curve of the earth during daylight... through atmosphere...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#Intensity_in_the_Sola... The most effective way of collecting sunlight is to use curved reflective surfaces and concentrate it on to points that generate useful work either from the heat or from the photon intensity. Interestingly, such mirrors also offer anime/bond villain/scifi style focused energy delivery 'weapons'; which is why I am most surprised that the US space programs haven't put any in to higher orbit above the majority of the garbage floating about the earth. It might also be possible to use the delivered energy from such a system to incite deceleration of existing orbital junk and force burn-up/re-entry. |
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