Using lasers to transmit solar energy
As we know, solar power is the ultimate source of energy for mankind, and it's the most abundant(I have read that we receive more than 1000 times the energy we currently use, if we were to have a way to utilize all of it).
The power of solar is weakened because of the 93-million-mile distance between us and the Sun, so the energy we receive is very dilute and utilizing it is difficult. But what if we were to change that?
If we send a satellite close to the sun(as close as it can handle), convert the sunlight that falls on the satellite into broad laser beams and transmit to receivers on the Earth, we could get far higher energy densities than what is currently being done(one could think of the Icarus from the Bond movie Die Another Day.) There would be losses, but I doubt they'd be higher than they currently are. Then once on the Earth, we could use large lenses to dilute the energy back to the level on which it could be fed to heavy-duty solar panels.
Apart from the high cost of robust materials needed to sustain all that heat(we could use tungsten, for example, for the satellite body), what are the other considerations for this? Is there any obvious flaw I haven't noticed?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/37355. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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