Prometheus
Everything is mutable; nothing is sacred
- Reaction score
- 590
How's this for crazy?: A company files a patent to destroy hurricanes as they form by beaming them with energy from a space-based solar plant.
Maybe it is crazy, but that same company, Solaren, took a first step in that direction this week when it inked a deal with the northern California utility, PG&E, to provide 200 megawatts of power capacity transmitted from orbit in 2016.
Apparently, sending up billions of dollars worth of solar collectors and using microwaves to send the energy onto two square miles of receivers in the desert is a little ho-hum to Solaren's wild minds.
"The present invention relates to space-based power systems and, more particularly, to altering weather elements, such as hurricanes or forming hurricanes, using energy generated by a space-based power system," Jim Rogers and Gary Spirnak write in their 2006 patent application.
Shoop Da Whoop
Maybe it is crazy, but that same company, Solaren, took a first step in that direction this week when it inked a deal with the northern California utility, PG&E, to provide 200 megawatts of power capacity transmitted from orbit in 2016.
Apparently, sending up billions of dollars worth of solar collectors and using microwaves to send the energy onto two square miles of receivers in the desert is a little ho-hum to Solaren's wild minds.
"The present invention relates to space-based power systems and, more particularly, to altering weather elements, such as hurricanes or forming hurricanes, using energy generated by a space-based power system," Jim Rogers and Gary Spirnak write in their 2006 patent application.
Shoop Da Whoop