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Originally Posted by freespace
They can easily distribute the beam over a large area as to make per-square-meter power very low. Focusing the beam is only needed if you have restricted receiver area.
It would also be very easy to detect any miss alignment, and automatically shutdown or realign. There is no need to fear it, if you do, you been reading too many conspiracy theories 
(note also they would not use the same wavelength which your microwave uses, since the point is to punch through the atmosphere, not cook birds in flight)
1 square km is in geosynchronous orbit, if my maths is right, it would subtend an angle of ((asin(0.5 / 35 786) * 2) / pi) * 180 = 0.00160106688 degrees. I don't think we would have too much to worry about. |
Yes they can, and that's what they'd do. But in order to be commercially viable they must maintain a sustainable amount of voltage per square metre in order to pick it up via an antenna. For use as a power source, you'd have to be looking at least 30-50V per square metre. Low enough not to harm anyone, but it'd still give you a bit of a shock...much like a static discharge off a carpet.
What worries people is not so much the potential of beaming large amounts of electricity in a broadcast mode, but what happens if they decide to use a focused beam method of relaying the power down to the ground. Then it doesn't matter what wavelength of microwave they use. They could even use radio waves, but the thing is they'd be carrying tens of thousands of gigawatts of electrical energy all in a tightly focused beam.
The jarheads in the Pentagon could see immediate uses for that kind of beam and none of them are very friendly!!!.