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Post by The Astronomer on Jan 10, 2017 16:09:05 GMT
... Also sure the energy production is great but you can't really "export it" to sun poor world like Jupiter and the outer gas giants until some kind of colony on their end starts up. Energy and information are the two things most easily transported across interplanetary distances, they can both travel at light speed and don't have to be carried by a rocket. You could argue you need some infrastructure on the receiving end, but this can be simple fotovoltaic panels slapped on wherever. Mercury can just send a laser at those panels through the lasernet. I agree with this. Also, transporting goods from sunbathed planets is very easy: just make a mass driver.
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Post by argonbalt on Jan 10, 2017 16:50:11 GMT
Im not saying it is impossible, but you both seemed to miss interpret my point. Of course you could build solar/laser aggregation mirrors and reflectors on the receiving end. Thing is most inner worlds already get enough sunlight that all they really need would be a focusing/collection station in orbit and a microwave power beam station to move it planet side, or cut the orbital element all together and just have a ground based solar farm cluster.
So the main worlds it really makes to "beam" solar energy to is the outer gas moons. Places where sunlight is rare and space colonies and moon bases could use it direly. This is a basic supply-demand, you are taking something from somewhere with allot to where it is not allot. But unless the Mercurial folk are all Tesla type "FREE ENERGY FOR ALL!" you run into two three major problems:
1: It is not quite as simple as you might think. You need collector mirrors to focus the sun, then a beamer to move it out of mercury orbit, then it would ideally be focused every so often, but unfortunately the perfect equatorial zone to move it through is filled with planets, so you still need an over/under mirror/lens to really make use of it. Similarly if mercury is behind the sun you need a Lagrange point reflector arrangement as well. Still it needs to get past the Asteroid belt and finally by focused by some sort of polar orbited Jovian mirror before bouncing down to the specific moon and hitting the surface. this brings me to:
2: Maybe they will want a more simplistic solution? If they really need energy they could always simply use fissionables and even fusion, after all they are orbiting gas giants packed with exotic materials so it is not too crazy to think that much like currently on Earth, they will choose a simpler (cheaper?) localised power supply they have full control over. Even more so the planets that are terraformable and habitable are the same inner worlds which already get a significant chunk of solar exposure anyways, the places that might have a near Earth pressure blue-ish sky. And talking about free energy:
3: Many of the gas giant have inherent free energy systems anyways. Jupiter has it's nutso magnetic field waiting to be strung up to make a more concentrated collector, or outright just tap the Io dynamo for electricity, or geothermal power from it's near constant volcanicity. Likewise processes occur on many of the outer moons and are once again more locally available and extant than the long system of energy transfer from SOL. Granted once the density of the systems population expands rapidly harvesting that free energy will be more ideal but that is very VERY long term.
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