News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on X-37b space plane’s microwave power beam experiment.

Re:X-37b space plane’s microwave power beam experiment by dghughes on Saturday May 09, 2020 @10:10AM (#23124816)
The power must be enormous at the source. It would degrade considerably from the source, inverse square law.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:X-37b space plane’s microwave power beam experiment by Turing_Machine on Saturday May 09, 2020 @10:30AM (#23124981)
The inverse square law only applies to a point source radiating uniformly in all directions.

Laser and microwave beams, while they do suffer from losses over distance, aren't anywhere near that bad.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:X-37b space plane’s microwave power beam experiment by cevans01 on Saturday May 09, 2020 @02:00PM (#23126924)
The inverse square law still applies to directional transmitters and optical transmitters. It's just that their transmit gain is much much higher.
[ Parent | on HN ]