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ICOM radios. Welcome to... Good evening, everyone.
It's time for HamTalk Live, episode number 214,
Collecting Solar Power from Space, recorded live
on Thursday, May 28th, 2020. I'm your host, Neil
Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks for tuning in to this episode
of HamTalk Live. Tonight we're joined by Dr.
Paul Jaffe, KJ4IKI, and we'll take your calls
live in just a few minutes. Last week, Christian
Kudnick, K0STH, was here to talk about the TuneUp
event, and if you missed that show, you can listen
anytime at HamTalkLive .com. on your favorite
podcast app or on YouTube and You can catch the
rebroadcast on WTWW that's 5085 a .m. Saturdays,
but there's a new time that changed the time
last week We're on about 3 30 p .m. Eastern time
over on WTWW again at Saturdays 5085 a .m. and
we're on about 330 in the afternoon now instead
of I Think it was 630 we were on so Note that
schedule change there a couple of notes here
before we get going first of all a double RL
Released some changes to the field day rules
today Class D operators are able to talk to other
Class D operators because there's going to be
probably a bunch of Class D operators that's
operating from home this year. So that's a temporary
rule change and also a club category where you
can kind of compile people that are in a club.
So check up on that and again we'll have our
field day Q &A. uh... show here in a couple weeks
and uh... paul bork uh... in one s f q will be
here uh... to give us the latest on everything
on field day but just want to mention that if
you haven't seen that uh... that came out today
so take a look at that also we had some people
asking for ham talk live shirts we haven't done
an order in a long time and i didn't make one
for Dayton this year since Hamvention didn't
happen so uh... i went ahead and opened up The
shirt order form again, so if you're interested
in buying a ham talk live shirt those are those
orders will go through June 15th and Then I'll
take the orders and and send that order in and
get those made and get those mailed out So if
you're interested in getting a HamTalk Live shirt,
they're $20 for most sizes and that includes
shipping and everything. Just go to our website
hamtalklive .com and there's a link there where
you find the show schedule and then it also says
shirt order and at the top of the schedule page
there's a link to the shirt order. I also posted
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, so you can
go there and just click on the link and it'll
take you to the order form if you're interested
in getting one of those since we haven't done
one in a while. Okay. Well, the thunder rolls
outside. I don't know if you can hear that or
not, but hopefully we'll be able to get through
without any interruptions tonight. We've got
a great guest tonight. Dr. Paul Jaffe is working
on some really cool stuff and we're really excited
to talk to him. So get your questions ready to
go for him. If you're listening to us live on
Thursday night, you can give us a call after
the interview by telephone at 859 -982 -7373.
You can also send a question via Twitter. The
Twitter handle is at HamTalk Live and I'll give
out that phone number again in just a little
bit. And also when we get to the time where you
can call in, again it's 859 -982 -7373. So have
that handy and I'll let you know when it's time
to call in. So I'll be back with Paul right after
this word from Tower Electronics right here on
HamTalk Live. Thanks for choosing Tower Electronics.
How may we help you today? We have PL259s, we
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power, it's the size of our tower. HamTalk Live.
Thanks to Tower Electronics for sponsoring the
show again tonight. All those hamfests are canceled,
so you'll have to find them online. But they're
there. It's PL -259 .com. And they'll be back
out on the hamfest trail as soon as we get some
of these hamfests opened up. And you can stop
by and say hello to Scott and Jill. But for now,
catch them online. PL -259 .com. Well, my guest
tonight is Dr. Paul Jaffe KJ4IKI. He's a spacecraft
engineer for the United States Naval Research
Laboratory in the field of space, solar, and
power beaming. Paul has a bachelor of science
in electrical engineering from the University
of Maryland, master's from Johns Hopkins, and
a PhD from the University of Maryland. He's worked
on over a dozen NASA and Department of Defense
space missions. He served as a coordinator and
editor of the Naval Research Labs. Space solar
power study report and is the principal investigator
for a solar or a space solar power Related research
effort. So Paul, thank you so much for taking
time out to be on the show tonight Neal it's
my pleasure. I'm grateful for the opportunity
And I should mention that that Paul came to us
through another Paul Paul Brown WD9 GCO was interviewing
you for Newsline. I actually anchored that episode
of Newsline or that report last week and said
I had this fabulous interview. This guy is great.
He's got all this cool stuff. And I had to put
it all into 90 seconds and it just doesn't do
justice. So, so he said, Hey, why don't you have
him on on your show and we can spend some more
time talking about some, some of this fascinating
research. So, so tell us about collecting. uh...
solar power in space and and beaming it back
in and this uh... satellite that's going to give
you some data that uh... to try some of this
stuff and gather some data uh... for further
development yes so it's uh... and it's a very
exciting time for us because we recently had
a space experiment launch this was uh... recently
on the x thirty seven b which is the Air Force's
space plane, sort of like a mini space shuttle,
but launches and since it has no people on it,
it can stay up there for quite some time. And
we were fortunate to get a hosting opportunity
on that craft and launch recently. We're still
awaiting the data, but it should be up there
for a good long time, at least some number of
months, maybe even a couple of years. And we
should be able to get information that will help
us advance the technology. It probably makes
sense for me to step back a little bit and just
talk about what space solar is and what the motivation
for it is. The idea actually dates back quite
some time depending on which historical references
you trust. could be Isaac Asimov back in 1941
who wrote about it in a short story called Reason
that appeared in the iRobot collection that some
of your listeners might be familiar with. And
then there was a noteworthy article in the journal
Science in 1968 authored by Peter Glaser. But
the main idea is that you are collecting sunlight
in space and then sending it wirelessly to the
earth. And you might reasonably ask, well, the
sunlight hits the earth, even if you don't have
a satellite in space, why would you add this
extra step? And the reasoning goes along these
lines. On the earth, of course, we have nighttime,
which averaged over the course of the year means
half the time you're not getting sunlight. And
then with clouds and weather and the atmosphere,
the amount of sunlight that you have access to
is further reduced. Depending on the orbit you
select in space you can be in sunlight greater
than 99 % of the time and you never have to worry
about clouds or weather losses and The sunlight
is going to be brighter there than anywhere on
earth so the trick then is figuring out an economical
way or a way that makes sense for whatever your
particular application is To collect that sunlight
and then to send it to the place where you need
it on earth in the ideal situation you could
think of space solar as having the benefits of
being clean because like ground -based solar
there's no Carbon dioxide that's produced it
is constant unlike solar on the ground and Something
that's unique about it compared to any other
energy source is that it can be transmitted globally
So you could think of this maybe in the same
terms that you would think about GPS or another
satellite constellation that provides global
service the idea that you could get energy Anywhere
in the world and then of course the Sun is the
closest thing we have in our solar system to
an unlimited energy source and say Fusion reactor
we can already take advantage of so that's kind
of the basic lay of the land for What it is and
what the motivation comes from? So what kind
of What data do you get from the satellite? What
kind of data are you gathering and how do you
use that to try to test some of the theories
in making this all work? So I should mention
pretty early on here that there's a lot of different
ways that solar power satellites could be implemented.
There was a sort of heyday in the 1970s during
the first energy crisis. in which NASA and the
Department of Energy worked together and spent
quite a bit of money on studies and some early
technology demonstrations to look at how this
could be done. And of course, the energy crisis
at that time dissipated and interest waned and
people said, oh, you know, my gas is less than
a dollar a gallon again. Why am I going to worry
about energy? Fast forward a couple of decades
and we still have to worry about energy for some
of the same reasons and for some new reasons.
to, and certainly though most of our energy still
does come from fossil fuels, there's of course
debate as to exactly when they might run out,
but I think it's fairly uncontroversial to say
that they will run out at some point. So because
there's these different ways that solar power
satellites could be implemented, the type of
technology that might be used varies a lot. The
experiment that we launched recently and that
we're going to get the data from pertains to
a particular concept called the sandwich approach.
And this is a concept in which the sunlight is
collected using solar cells. And there are, of
course, alternatives. You could use some sort
of heat engine or even something exotic like
a sun pumped laser. But for the sandwich approach,
you use photovoltaics and you use microwave power
transmission, which is going to be very familiar
to hands. So even within this category of solar
power satellites that use photovoltaics for solar
collection and microwave power transmission for
wireless power transmission, there's still a
huge range of different approaches. The experiment
that we have on the X37B takes the photovoltaics
has the conversion electronics as a layer under
the photovoltaics and then finally has a bottom
layer that is the actual transmit antenna element.
So what it does is it uses a large phased array
as the transmit antenna and then sort of the
top surface of that is covered with the photovoltaics
and then there's a separate part of the satellite
that redirects the sunlight using large reflectors
to track the sun as it goes to the orbit. So
this is an introduction or a background to your
question about what data we're going to get and
how we're going to use it. The experiment we
have on X37 does not actually transmit any energy
into space. What it does instead is the energy
that's generated is transmitted or transferred
really into An electronic load so that we can
very accurately measure the output and we can
measure then in turn The efficiency of the module
and we can also keep track of its temperature
performance Many of your listeners might know
the temperature control in space is a lot more
difficult than it is on the earth Because we
lose one of the three common ways that we use
for moving heat around for folks who recall their
high school science classes, they might know
that we move heat through radiation, conduction,
and convection. Convection requires some sort
of working fluid, which on the Earth can be air.
In space, there's no air, of course, so we are
limited to conduction for moving heat around
a spacecraft and then radiation for getting it
into space. If you have a large spacecraft and
a large solar array and it's not going to be
100 % efficient. There's going to be a lot of
heat that needs to be dissipated and the DC to
RF conversion electronics under the solar array
is also going to generate waste heat. So a big
focus of the experiment is seeing whether we
have been successful in our design for controlling
the heat. So the main things to summarize are
measuring the efficiency of the sunlight to microwave
conversion aspect of this module and then also
measuring the thermal performance. Okay, very
good. That makes total sense. And if they're
listening to this show and they know what I do
for a living, they better remember their high
school science. So now once you work out the
collection, you've got the satellite to work
on the collection and I'm sure there's a whole
series of things that are going to have to take
place to get to this point. But once you do get
it transferred into RF and you beam the RF down,
then what are you going to do with it then? Once
you get it back down here as RF? Important question.
The receiver is comprised of a series of what
are called rectennas. Rectenna is a portmanteau
or a combination of the words rectifier and antenna,
and it's a special kind of antenna, and it can
take a variety of forms, dipoles or a whole range
of different forms depending on the polarization
and particular goals, the energy density you
expect to fall on it. takes the microwave and
converts it back to DC on the ground. To help
illustrate this, and this is something that I
suspect a lot of hams are familiar with, because
this idea is not new. The idea of a rectenna
has been around since at least the 60s. And even
if you look at radio electronics or any of the
old electronics magazines, they would often have
different articles about how you could make your
own microwave detector or microwave leakage detector.
But it basically depends on having a shot key
diode and a matching circuit that matches the
impedance so that you get the maximum energy
up. To help folks understand this, because this
may be common knowledge among hands, but certainly
in the general public less so, earlier this year
we actually had astronaut Jessica Mir on the
space station do a demonstration of a rectenna.
You can make a very simple one just by taking
a Schottky diode and an LED and putting them
together, anode to cathode and cathode to anode,
and it will light up in the presence of Wi -Fi
or even the very small amount of leakage that's
common from your kitchen microwave oven. So on
the space station, Jessica Muir took one that
we had built and sent up. on one of the space
station resupply missions and showed how she
could light up this led just using the wi -fi
on the international space station so it's a
simple demonstration that pretty much anyone
can do at home to show how the receiver works
the elements in the receiver very cool so so
you mentioned and in some of your stuff about
how ham radio has really helped with this research
and filled in some of the wave mechanics and
things like that. Tell us a little bit about
the connection to ham radio. Yeah, absolutely.
So I've had my ham license now for about 11 years,
maybe a little bit longer. I got it before my
first son was born, anticipating that once I
became a parent I was going to have a lot less
time for things, which turned out to be accurate.
and I know in getting ready to take the hand
licensing advanced and I was a technician class
and then immediately general and I was certainly
helped by the fact that I had a at the time a
education in electrical engineering there is
quite a bit of crossover as major listeners might
know so thinking about both In practice and sort
of the theory from my educational background
together helps a lot right like there's been
I think a loss in some ways of that sort of hands
-on and intuitive Knowledge that comes with being
a ham, right? We're seeing a little bit of a
resurgence with the whole maker movement and
the like and it's really reassuring to me that
the ham community I think is is responding in
a way that makes sense like Some of your listeners
might be able to understand the context here.
So, you know, ARL now has on the air in addition
to QST, and I get the on the air not just because
it's helpful for me, but also because I'm hoping
to get my kids into it. And definitely my sons
have expressed interest in ham radio and I got,
I forget which. company it was now that put out
a comic book some time ago talking about the
different aspects and facets of HammerU, but
I sort of surreptitiously printed that out and
let it hang out around the house. But yeah, but
certainly just thinking about frequencies and
spectrum and wavelength and modulation schemes
and understanding the ionosphere and how different
parts of the spectrum are more or less conducive
to how radio waves and microwaves are going to
travel. has definitely been helpful to me. So
there's I think a lot of crossover and I think
that anyone who has an electrical engineering
degree is doing themselves a disservice by not
also getting a ham license because it's not that
much extra to learn and it opens up the whole
world of ham radio. So there's I think missed
opportunity a lot of time. I talked to a lot
of my electrical engineering colleagues and it's
like I don't understand why you don't have a
ham license. Well, there you go. There's your
advertisement for getting your ham license. Obviously,
you're hoping that this is going to turn into
something. What are your hopes for the next few
years in this project? There's a mix of different
answers for that. Often folks ask is why is the
Navy doing this or and there's I guess also the
question What does the Navy do in space and the
answer to that really is like most of the earth's
surface is covered by water and one of the best
ways to use that for communications or for Observation
or what -have -you is is from space You know
in a lot of our recent conflicts one of the biggest
challenges has been getting energy to places
like Ford operating bases and combat outposts.
We've unfortunately lost a lot of people and
endured a lot of casualties for things like bringing
trucks full of fuel to places that are dangerous
and hostile. If there was a way to send the energy
directly from space to such places, that would
be truly game changing. And taking it even To
a larger scale, like you can imagine how the
developing world, which has a ever increasing
thirst for energy, is going to need to have electricity
supplied in some way. And if there's a country
or a company that's able to supply that from
space, even without any existing infrastructure,
it's a really powerful prospect. Now, we have
to be realistic. The fact is that this technology
is still maturing. That includes both the power
beaming technology and a lot of aspects of the
space systems for a lot of the historically Notable
concepts a Ton of mass is required to be put
in space, right? So we're to to make the power
beaming efficient particularly for microwave
you need very large apertures and that translates
into a lot of mass for a spacecraft and the economics
like in so many parts of our world are really
what drive things in the end. DoD is a little
bit different because we're not paying 10 cents
a kilowatt hour for electricity for our soldiers,
sailors, and Marines that are Ford based. In
some situations, we're paying in excess of $10
a kilowatt hour, depending on how hard it was
to get the fuel to power the generator there.
They call this the fully burdened cost of fuel.
So you can understand why the Navy and why DoD
would be interested in this. And you can see
how as the technology matures, it may become
something that is valuable and compelling for
other folks to supply energy in other contexts.
And just from like a geopolitical standpoint,
you can envision how if there is this capability,
it's something that we would probably want the
United States to be at the forefront or not too
far behind on. Right. One example. that I often
use or analogy more accurately is to GPS, right?
I mentioned briefly earlier, but if we were in
1960 and I told you at that time, like, hey,
you know, wouldn't it be great if we could have
a constellation of dozens of satellites and you
could just have a little handheld device and
no matter where you were in the world, it could
tell you exactly where you were. You would look
at me like I was crazy because at that time we
had a handful of satellites and getting into
space was still Chansey at best, right? You probably
have seen videos of all the rocket explosions
from that era and atomic clocks which are central
to GPS's function took up several rooms. So the
idea of putting something like that on the satellite
was Completely preposterous, right? We were lucky
to be able to put up something the size of a
grape grapefruit much less something that Took
up several rooms and required very precise temperature
control and the like so but over time the technology
for miniaturizing and making space where the
atomic clocks was developed actually at the naval
research laboratory where where I work and The
system for GPS was put incrementally in place,
the technology was developed, and now we take
GPS for granted. It's like a utility we don't
have to pay for, right? And it has created all
these opportunities and applications that we
could have scarcely envisioned in 1960, right?
Can you imagine thinking about Uber or all these
other similar services that have been enabled
by GPS, just even conceiving of the concept of
1960 would have been totally alien. So that's
one way that it could progress. And I think that's
one thing to keep in mind is like, we're not
sure exactly how this could unfold, like what
might open up and what opportunities might be
there. If you look at GPS, pretty soon afterwards,
like the Russians did GLONASS because they saw
the value of it. And now pretty much every country
in the world doesn't want to be beholden to the
US GPS system, right? We've got the Europeans
doing Galileo, the Chinese have Baidu, the Japanese
have their own system. Other countries recognize
the value of this and want to be able to do it
for themselves. Okay, very good. Well we have,
we've gone on quite a while here so we're going
to take a break but fascinating information so
we'll be back with Paul and we'll talk more about
this and we'll take some of your questions. We
are getting a few here online on Twitter and
on the comments but if you want to give us a
call let me give you that number again. It's
859 9827373. So we'll come back and we'll take
your calls and your questions and your tweets
with Paul right after this word from ICOM America
right here on HamTalk Live. Get out and be active
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Visit icomamerica .com slash amateur for more
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Give us a call at 859 -982 -7373. Again, the
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rather type than talk, tweet us at HamTalk Live.
Now, here's Neil Rapp with more HamTalk Live.
Sorry for the delay. Your host, Neil Rapp, is
reading a book on antigravity and he just can't
put it down. Now, here's more HamTalk Live. Welcome
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It's time for your phone calls now. If you have
a question for Paul, Give us a call at 859 -982
-7373 or you can tweet us. It's at HamTalk Live
on Twitter and if you're listening to us on WTWW
or the podcast edition, you won't be able to
reach us live since Thursday night and we won't
be there. We'll get back to Paul here in just
a second. We do have a tweet or two, but Jacob
is on the line here this evening. So, Jacob,
what's your question for Paul? Yeah, my question
is what is the methodology he will be using in
the design of experiments and what, how many
factors are there involved in his experiments?
Jacob thanks for the question. Yeah, there's
quite a lot right so one of the challenges For
the idea of space solar is because there are
so many different ways that it could be done
There's quite a few options on the technologies
to be pursued I'll mention In terms of power
being so yes, so at the end of the day the satellite
has to do two things It has to collect the energy
and it has to send the energy wirelessly to wherever
is needed So for the experiment on the X -37,
we're measuring the conversion efficiency, the
temperature performance, and various telemetry
points that'll help give us a fuller picture
of that. We have also been doing work in power
beaming in other parts of the spectrum. Last
year we did a power beaming demonstration using
lasers where we sent hundreds of watts over hundreds
of meters and for any of the Previous work and
I'm making reference to if your listeners would
like to learn more The NAFO research lab has
done a number of press releases on these and
it has a YouTube channel that has videos that
show Jessica Muir on the space station doing
the proctenna demonstration and also this laser
one that I'm talking about in terms of different
parameters That we are interested in for experiments.
There's quite a few for power beaming alone.
We've identified 15 different metrics and figures
of merit that we would look at and they include
things like the input power to the transmitter,
the output power from the receiver, which you
can then use to find the end -to -end efficiency,
which is important for a lot of these things.
The mass of either the transmitter or the receiver
could be of importance. The volume that they
take up. These are all different things that
are of interest for a given implementation. Does
that sort of get at what you're asking about?
Yeah, I mean, this isn't like a 15 factorial
design experiment, is it? Oh, no. The one that
we have in orbit right now is quite straightforward.
We're measuring efficiency and temperature performance
at a number of different points. And we've tested
it on the ground, we've done simulations, there's
no substitute really for testing something in
space because of the illumination and temperature
and radiation environments. So we're gonna learn,
no matter what happens, we are likely to learn
a lot. And it's not, because it's an engineering
experiment rather than... One where we're trying
to just isolate a single variable like you might
do in biology or a more I should say a less applied
science. There's less concern about confounding
the results by having a range of variables But
the hardware is fixed right we can change some
of the settings depending on where we are in
the orbit and the like but but for the most part
will be Running it in a relatively standard configuration
Alright, thanks Neil. Great show. Very fascinating
topic. Oh, thank you very much and thank you,
Jacob, for calling in. We appreciate it. Alright,
bye. Bye -bye. And if you'd like to call in,
the number is 859 -982 -7373. Take some more
calls here as those come in. 859 -982 -7373.
We've got a tweet that came in from Greg, KM5GT.
Let's get to that one. Greg says, a question
for Paul. Is there a danger of this technology
being weaponized? If so, what precautions can
be put in place? So yeah, here's the question.
All of us scientists never want to hear but And
yet it comes up with great frequency, yeah, it
actually so probably the question I get The most
out of the gate is is this gonna fry birds? So
I think this is That's kind of like the astronaut
thing, how do you go to the bathroom? That's
the question is is this gonna fry birds? Right.
Yeah, this is definitely the most common one,
I think. So it gets back to the idea of power
density, right? If you go outside on a sunny
day, you can do that without fear of bursting
into flame. However, if you on that exact same
day go outside with a large magnifying glass,
or even not that large, and you position it carefully,
you can set things on fire not because you increased
the amount of energy, but because you focused
the energy into a smaller area. And this is power
density, amount watts per square meter, if you
will. So for space solar, you can design and
implement a system that will be unable to produce
a power density that will exceed a given threshold,
which you can select guided by the IEEE or ICNR
safety thresholds for microwave power density
or for laser power density or for whatever area
of the spectrum that you might choose. And it's
worth noting that in the case of radio waves
and microwaves, they are much harder to focus,
right? Like if you put a magnifying glass next
to your Wi -Fi router, You're not going to set
anything on fire for a couple reasons. We hope.
If you can, you should study carefully what's
going on because you may have some astounding
breakthrough. But because for microwaves, the
wavelength is so much longer than for sunlight,
like I used in the example there, it's much more
difficult to focus and to get to high levels
of power density. Requires even more stupendously
large apertures than we've already been talking
about so the risk of danger or weaponization
for Microwave is very small and for laser. It's
probably more significant, but it's still remote
I would say in part because Lasers don't go as
well through the atmosphere like a Weapon that
you can only use if it's not cloudy is gonna
be probably of limited military interest and
There's a variety of big challenges. So there's
no doubt that any tool has the capability of
Being weaponized. I mean you're the fork that
you used to eat dinner with you could injure
someone with if you use it in a inappropriate
way uh... but solar power satellites would be
extraordinarily difficult to weaponize and all
of the important aspects that might lead you
to evaluate whether it could be weaponized are
going to be in pretty plain sight answer that
question yeah i think so and uh... along the
same lines john w four u s f says he came in
late to the broadcast, but is there any concern
with somebody hacking into this in outer space
and hacking into the energy and stealing the
energy from other countries or other companies?
Cybersecurity, I think pervades all of our systems
at this point whether it's a power plant on the
ground or a satellite in space So attention needs
to be paid to it. No doubt stealing the energy
I think is probably less of a concern if you've
secured the satellite like you could I suppose
in theory if you were able to hack into any satellite
You could reposition it or repoint it Most of
the concepts for the power beaming are more complex
than that. Unlike a communication satellite or
an observation satellite where you can just kind
of repoint it and the signal goes somewhere else.
For microwave power transmission and also for
a number of the laser implementations, you have
a beacon on the ground called a pilot signal
that sends that signal up to the spacecraft and
the spacecraft uses that pilot signal to actually
steer the beam. And that is an opportunity for
encryption right there. So it would be challenging
to spoof. And if the satellite didn't see the
beacon, the power would not be directed to the
receiver. So there's... No question that any
complex system that uses hardware and software
needs to be concerned with cyber security, but
the considerations for solar power satellites
are no greater, I think, than any other system.
Okay, very good. 859 -982 -7373 is the phone
number if you'd like to call in. We have just
a few minutes remaining, so if you want to give
us a call. It's 859 -982 -7373 and you need to
be doing that now because we're just about out
of time here for the show this evening. My guest
is Dr. Paul Jaffe, KJ4IKI from the Naval Research
Laboratory and we're talking a little bit about
this. collecting solar power in space and beaming
it back. You brought up at the beginning of the
show Isaac Asimov and talking about it way back
in some of his novels and that kind of thing.
But the thing that came up that I remembered
was when I was younger, I played SimCity like
crazy. I don't know if any of the listeners played
SimCity or not. Whenever you built your city
on this computer game, you had all these different
power sources and so you can pick hydroelectric
and you had coal and gas and all these different
things and solar and, you know, as in real life,
there are pros and cons to each one. And so,
you know, some of them are going to pollute more
and some of them are going to be more cost efficient
and that kind of thing. But, but when you got
to like the year 3000 or something, you got this
big. this huge satellite dish. It looked like
one of those great big, you know, C -band dishes
back in the day and it's pointed straight up
and if something went wrong, it's like, you know,
the beam was off a little bit and all of a sudden
you burned up this part of the city. I mean,
I know you said you can't fry birds but is that
kind of what we're looking at down the road?
Yeah, I think the the retro directive beam control
will go a long way to preventing the beam from
wandering around the countryside as my colleague
Dick Dickinson likes to put it but yeah, that's
definitely a memorable image from Sin City and
I've seen I haven't got to that part of the game
myself but back in the day but definitely I've
seen the screenshots of what you're talking about
and it is I think maybe one source of some of
the safety concerns that are raised about this.
Yeah. We don't, we don't need a movie like the
China syndrome to, you know, to inspire fear
and nuclear power. We don't, we don't need that.
Yeah. Well, there was, I think there was a James
Bond film also that had a beam from space and
some of the, uh, Maybe even in Akira, I think
there was something like that. So yeah, science
fiction, of course, has to look for points of
conflict to introduce and you can invent them
wherever you would like. Yeah, there we go. All
right. Well, let me we're actually a little over
time here. So let me check and make sure we've
addressed all the questions out there that have
been typed in. And we got our phone calls tonight.
So that was great. Thank you for calling in Jacob
and Chiming in and I think we I think we've caught
up with all the questions. So Paul I'll let you
make any final remarks that you'd like and and
then we'll let you get going Great. Yeah. No,
like I said, I really appreciate the opportunity.
I am glad to speak to an audience of hams because
I feel like they get the Technology a little
bit more and they understand some of the subtleties.
We didn't discuss too much about spectrum, which
is another important thing to consider for this
since as we all know the If you're going to be
sending radio waves or electromagnetic radiation
It's going to reside somewhere in the spectrum
and that has to be account for but I would just
ask For folks that are interested in this to
go ahead and and take a look at nrl's website.
It's just nrl dot Navy dot mill November Romeo
Lima and dot Navy dot mill and Yeah, we have
a lot of videos a lot of things that can Inform
folks about what we've been up to and where we're
planning to go So watch this space as we start
to get results. I'm hopeful that We will have
more to report Very good. Well, that's really
cool. And it's cool that you got the LED up there
on the space station to demonstrate that. That's
a great way to accomplish some education there
on the antennas. And I really like that idea.
So good job on that and the whole thing. So best
of luck with the research. If you find some startling
facts, get back with us. We want to hear about
that. Great. Thank you, Neil. All right. That
is a wrap for this week's edition of HamTalk
Live. Thanks to my guest, Dr. Paul Jaffe, KJ4IKI.
and everybody out there in cyberspace for listening
and calling in and typing in and invite you back
next thursday night 9 pm eastern time and for
a list of all of our upcoming guests visit hamtalklive
.com and if you like the show please leave us
a review that helps others find us faster so
for now this is neil wrapp wb9vpg Sing 7 -3,
7 -5, and, as always, may the good DX be yours!