In article ,
Tony Rusi wrote:
I was assuming you could generate extra electrical power aboard the
ISS by hitting the PV-arrays with the proper wavelength.

At least in principle, yes. Bear in mind that they are pointed at the
Sun, not at the Earth, although they could be Earth-pointed easily enough
during orbital night. A bigger problem is, just how many laser stations
were you thinking of building? Bear in mind that ISS is within sight of
any particular point on the ground for only a few minutes, a few times a
day.

That
electrical power would be used to power the e-tethers with no impact
on the power budget of the ISS.

Almost certainly it is easier to increase available power by just adding
more solar arrays.

Thus re-boost fuel would never have to be brought up to the ISS again.

Approaches like this were seriously considered. One practical problem is
that the tether will occasionally be cut by space debris. Another is that
the detailed physics of orbiting electrodynamic tethers are not very well
understood, so performance prediction is difficult.

...Is there any reason
given enough time, that the ISS could not be moved to L5...

Two big ones. First, ISS's electronics -- never mind its people! -- are
not sufficiently radiation-hard to handle slowly working its way out
through the Van Allen belts. Second, the effectiveness of electrodynamic
tethers deteriorates rapidly as altitude rises, because both the strength
of Earth's magnetic field and the density of the local plasma fall off
quickly with altitude.
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MOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer
first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! |