Phased Array [was: ...100 MW of Space Solar Power ...persingle launch!]

Dr J R Stockton wrote:
Without analysis, ISTM that one does want the structures close together,
not for visible or RF "optical" reasons, but since it's probably easier
for other vehicles to avoid them that way. But it may be better to have
them far enough apart to be dodged independently.

There is microgravity to contend with here as well as electrostatic
charging and repulsion.
The microgravity fields of the individual elements will cause them to
try and clump together if there isn't some sort of structure connecting
them; once they get close enough their similar electrical charges will
cause them to repel each other - the end result will be that the forces
balance at some point, and they all start settling into a stable
geodetic lattice of points with equal spacing between each of the elements.*
Unfortunately, that stable shape is a sphere, so they start interfering
with each other's microwave transmissions and getting into each other's
shadows.
But then the tidal forces get hold of them, as the ones on the side of
the sphere facing away from Earth are in higher orbits than the ones on
the side facing Earth, and the periods of the two orbits are subtly
different. The details of what happens next in a system with dozens or
hundreds of individual satellites in it would take a computer to
simulate, but I don't think their behavior is simple by any means.

* I think this effect was observed with the peeling insulation blanket
fragments on the HST visible during the Shuttle's approach during the
first repair mission. They seemed to be floating in a cloud around the
telescope, rather than either being pulled into it by its tiny gravity
field or drifting away from it due to the influence of different air
drag versus mass characteristics or photon pressure from the sunlight
striking them.

Pat