Solar belt around the moon planned by Japanese engineers

[sofa king]

159. We have "dreams" of our own, too!

Those of you who love hard science fiction will absolutely adore the Nasa Institute of Advanced Concepts publications:

http://www.niac.usra.edu/studies/studies.html

(The Final Reports are mostly in .pdf format, requiring a .pdf viewer or plug-in.)

It isn't crazy at all to envision mega-projects of this scale because they're working on the premise of exponentially reproducing machinery, which is already among us in the form of 3D printers. Here's just one "advanced concept," which is what we call our own dreams:

http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/880Chirikjian.pdf

If, for example, one spends a couple billion dollars to set up a single 100-ton operation on the lunar equator, and that facility is capable of reproducing itself in one year as well as building one square kilometer of solar, mining, and transport array within that year using only lunar materials, then the entire equator of the moon can be covered with solar arrays in about fifteen years. (circumfrence of the moon ~ 11,000 km; 2 ^ 14 = 16,384).

For both safety and station-keeping purposes, it's probably better to aim the microwave death-ray at the Earth-Moon L4 and L5 Lagrange points, ensuring that misdirection of the initial beam cannot easily be used on the earth, and then smaller beams would be directed to geostationary receivers. The process does not have to be particularly efficient, since any additional energy comes from outside of the earth's relatively closed thermodynamic system (in much the same way that hydrocarbons work today, by burning yesterday's energy in addition to the energy we are receiving from the sun today).

One problem that will have to be addressed is the fact that the addition of that much heat-energy to the earth might rival current global warming rates through hydrocarbon use, which are dumping stored heat energy at prodigious rates today. One way to avoid further heating the earth, and possibly even partially reversing the warming trend we have ignited, would be to beam the Earth's surplus power and collected heat-energy back to the moon, where it could be used to cook volatiles out of lunar material (for example, one could put a transparent lensed dome and rectenna over a large-ish crater and roast it with a microwave array from Earth's south pole to cook off and capture oxygen, He3, hydrogen and nitrogen). or to simply deposit the surplus heat someplace where it doesn't threaten us by re-melting some of the Moon's surface. So it might be the Earth that is training the death-ray onto the moon, using this plan!

We probably wouldn't be where we are today without the "dreams" of Wehrner von Braun and the visions (sometimes frighteningly cautionary) of artist Chesley Bonestell, so do not underestimate their power!