Pendleton@UTAH-20.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (10/19/83)
From: Bob Pendleton <Pendleton@UTAH-20.ARPA> I'm not very worried about the technical problems of SPS, they look solvable to me. As for the area and isolation needed for the rectenna, you could put one in the Utah salt flats with no problem, no one near by, not much of an ecology, just many square miles of salt. If you MUST have rectennam near major cities why not float them 20-30 miles off shore? Most of the really big cities are near an ocean. The main problem I see is the possiblity of power sats being negotiated away in arms limitation talks. This may sound a little crazy, but people are talking about putting gigawatt lasers in orbit, those lasers have to get power somewhere. The whole "star wars" "high frontier" concept could be negotiated away and power stats with it. Not to mention that I'm paranoid enough to think someone has already come up with a whole list of military applications for a high energy microwave beam. Oh, well. As to developing electric airplanes and space shuttles, seems to me we already have. Given enough electricity water can be converted into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, very nice fuels, thank you. Bob Pendleton -------
KFL%MIT-MC@sri-unix.UUCP (10/27/83)
From: Keith F. Lynch <KFL @ MIT-MC> The effects of microwave exposure are not cumulative. ...Keith