Could an orbital photoelectric generator work?

First I'm going to expand on what I mean by this generator: the photo-electric effect means that metal spaceships will slowly become positively charged as they fly across space, but for the purposes of this question, I plan to have six geostationary stations in orbit around Earth, equidistant from each other such that on the X, Y and Z axes you will have one station every 1/4 of a rotation around Earth. Between these stations on the X, Y and Z axes there are needle-like magnesium pods in orbit between the stations and becoming positively charged, so by the time they reach the next station they should have become sufficiently charged (if they are in view of the Sun) to be able to produce a few thousand volts (or more).

EDIT: I know that the pods themselves do not need to move in order to be able to generate electricity, but as they travel they have time to charge between stations, which effectively has a larger area, but without building more permanent structures.

My question is not whether this is practical or not, but whether this is possible and whether the physics checks out?

posted almost 8 years ago

Alex Robinson‭

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