On 06/01/2017 02:30 PM, Robert Clark wrote:
NASA just announced a solar probe to travel quite close to the Sun,
about 3.7 million miles from the solar surface:

Nasa’s hotly anticipated solar mission renamed to honour astrophysicist
Eugene Parker.
Renamed the Parker Solar Probe to honour solar astrophysicist who
predicted high speed solar wind, the spacecraft will attempt to get
close to sun’s surface.
Wednesday 31 May 2017 07.08 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/science/...lar-probe-plus


Spacecraft able to get this close to the Sun could potentially allow
beamed interstellar propulsion. For a spacecraft of any size, you would
need huge amounts of beamed power. Where to get it? If you make the beam
be solar-powered then can just use space-borne mirrors to focus the Suns
rays. But the mirror(s) would have to be impractically large if they
were in Earth orbit.

But what if we placed them close to the Sun? At the distance quoted of
3.7 million miles away from the Sun a mirror 1 km on a side could
collect a terawatt worth of power.

Note this could also be used for space solar power when beamed towards
Earth.

Bob Clark

Gee, what could go wrong?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net