I further note that the 2.4 gigahertz frequency-very close to that used for power transmission-is currently being employed for industry-standardized Wi-Fi 802.11b and g wireless Internet transmission. One benefit of using this frequency is that this band is unaffected by weather. With miniscule additional investment and little additional complexity, a global Internet linking all cooperating communities together can be designed into the power relay system!
Can such a radar system operate continuously for long periods of time? It certainly can. For example, the largest weather radar in Canada is the McGill S-Band Radar. It began operations in 1968 and has operated continuously ever since except during maintenance periods and periodic upgrades. It transmits 700 kilowatts of power. This provides proof of the concept that an intermittently operating 500 kilowatt to 500 megawatt radar transmitter could provide reliable operation for decades. It also clarifies that such a ground transmission system could be built by survival communities using inexpensive off-the-shelf components.[156]
Is beamed power safe? One researcher has noted that:
US standards are based on heating effects. Stricter standards are in effect in some countries. So far, no non-thermal health effects of low-level microwave exposure have been proven, although the issue remains controversial. Nevertheless, even the peak of the beam is not exactly a death ray. Underneath the rectenna, microwave levels are practically nil.[157]
The ground-based rectenna arrays would contain most of the technical complexity for such a system. And they would be quite simple; basically just a lot of short, cheap dipole antennas connected together by diodes, mounted on supporting scaffolding, and spread out across several acres. Each antenna would be just over seven inches in length, according to my calculations for a standard three-half-wavelength wave-dipole antenna. [158] Crops could be grown safely on the land around the rectenna scaffolding.
Beaming renewably produced power to an orbiting reflector would involve using simple technology not very different from a high-power radar, which is decades-old technology. Speaking as a former guided-missile fire-control technician in the U.S. Navy, I know from personal experience that bright teenagers can become competent at operating, maintaining, and troubleshooting this type of technology in a matter of months. This experience demonstrates that the ground-based portions of my proposed power-sharing system could certainly be maintained during chaotic years of upheaval which might predictably result from environmental and energy collapse.
This is a relatively small investment with a potentially big payoff. It allows for the full power of between-group cooperation to be employed on a global scale, even during the darkest days of this coming period. Much ground-breaking research on the topic of microwave beaming of power has been conducted by Dr. Gregory Benford. [159 160 ](For the record, Benford was the out-of-department member of my Ph.D. Committee at UC Irvine.)
Decades ago, visionary futurist R. Buckminster Fuller proposed the creation of a world energy grid. This grid would use land lines to link together the energy grids of all six of the planet's inhabited continents. The advantages of doing this were very clear to Fuller:
Within the crises times immediately ahead-into which we have already entered-the computer is soon to respond. We must integrate the world's electrical-energy networks. We must be able to continually integrate the progressive night-into day and day into-night hemispheres of our revolving planet.
With all the world's electric energy needs being supplied by a twenty-four-hour-around, omni-integrated network, all of yesterday's, one-half-the-time-unemployed, standby generators will be usable all the time, thus swiftly doubling the operating capacity of the world's electrical energy grid.[161]
There is simply no reason that a space-based system for worldwide power sharing could not put into place within a decade, or perhaps even sooner. Doing this would increase our chances of survival and would actively facilitate the emergence of a new post-crisis civilization that would possess the learning, and the technology, and the wisdom necessary to someday move forward to space again.
It is important to understand that only a high-energy, high-technology civilization is capable of making its way into the solar system. There it can harness the vast resources of raw materials and energy resources found in the asteroid belt, the Kuiper Belt, the Oort Cloud, the atmospheres of the gas giants (for hydrogen in particular), and the endless supply of energetic sunlight that radiates outward ceaselessly from our sun.
However, such a civilization has only a very narrow window of opportunity in which to transition from a civilization wholly dependent upon planetary energy and material resources to one able to utilize the thousand-fold greater resources of the entire solar system. This is because of the rapid onset of peak oil and global climate change, which in turn swiftly terminates high-energy planetary civilization.
Once such a civilization falls, it can never be restarted again, as the easily exploitable hydrocarbon resources and necessary metals and minerals will be gone. Our civilization appears to have passed the point of no return; however, I believe that by deploying the microwave reflector satellites I've described above, it may be possible to revisit that option after our existential crises have passed.
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