Anyone care to comment on how you get power back out of an IR laser beam?
Are you converting IR laser energy directly to electricity as in the microwave
case, or are you heating something which then indirectly generates electricity
by powering a turbine?

What about atmospheric attenuation and clouds? Or is the IR beam punching through
those clouds?

Size of the beam on the ground?

One of the safety mechanisms I recall about microwave beaming was a proposal that
used a phasing mechanism that caused the beam to focus when a pilot timing signal
was sent up from the ground. Turn off the pilot signal and the beam loses focus
thereby no longer irradiating the ground with high energy microwaves. Could this
be done with an IR laser?

Dave