And people are worried about cell phone radiation?
This kind of scheme would really zap people near the earth receivers
The beam would end up kind of "wide" by the time it reached earth
Add this idea to all the other alternative energy schemes proposed so far. We would have big orange extension cords sooner than this.
But to be fair, solar and wind power are not losers, they are good supplements for buildings and homes down here. They are not, however, good power sources for cars and trucks. Cars and trucks require oil, or else we are going to have to build a lot more coal and nuke power plants for electricity. I have to get to work 30 miles away.
It cannot be done in a manner which imparts a net gain in energy and which is economically feasible to the citizens of the Earth.
There, fixed it.
If the constellation were a phased array, mutually coherent (easily implemented) each could beam at the same point on the earth, the interference pattern, i.e., the beamwidth of all of the elements would be proportional to the wavelength divided by the effective width of the constellation. Extremely small.
If one satellite failed the effect outside of the intended target area would be comparable what would be experienced if only that one satellite were radiating. A few million watts over an area the size New England would be a negligible health risk, microwatts per square meter. Each satellite could weakly modulate its signal to provide a health indication of the array with out substantially defocussing the beam. Current phased array radars with thousands of elements radiate periodically into a near field horn, modulating one phase shifter at a time to provide real time monitoring of the array status. It's like weighting a mosquito on an elephant, doable if you have a high enough SNR and weight your elephant often enough. The modulation waveform could be like a cell phone's CDMA waveform, a set of orthogonal signals, which can individually be picked out of the cacophony of competing signals.