Little over two weeks ago I was at a military conference in Florida on power satellites. I was talking about the pup up and push idea of sending a laser stage up to 260 miles and while it's above the atmosphere push it into geosynchronous transfer orbit with a 4 GW ablation propulsion laser. (Half payload because the ISP is so high.)
At dinner with a couple of officers and Charles Miller, Charles made a case (obvious only in retrospect) that there is a simple, already tried, way to finance even a few hundred billion dollars for power satellites. Miller had tentatively discussed this back in May at the International Space Development Conference but at the time I missed it. This kicked off about a hundred emails last week on a private email list after a telephone conference call. The combination of vast amounts of cheap and very clean energy from power satellites and (more important) a way to finance them would certainly change future prospects. I will probably put up a web page about the idea this week. Keith _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
