How do they work? Just having solar panels float in space

Google "Archimedes Death Ray".

>>14236695
RCS on the mirror arrays.

>>14236695
wireless power transmission is a thing. just difficult.

one of the more out there proposals to splve our energy needs is to have a satalite with lots of solar panels and a huge microwave transmitter that beams down the power to a relatively conventional power plant that has its water heated by microwaves from space.

downsides are its not very efficient and you can't let planes fly near the beam.

>>14236734
this is the most practical solution. use the collected light to heat up a liquid or gas to spin a turbine, use electricity to energize plasma

>>14236695
Solar Systems are basically just collections of mirrors and lenses, which concentrate sunlight from thousands of kilometers of empty space into a single area roughly 50 km in diameter.

>>14236808
That's a Colony Laser though. It isn't reflecting and focusing sunlight to melt a target, it's using the colony's reactor to create a giant particle laser to destroy everything in a huge area.

>>14236763
Not like they didn't do this in Gundam before. In Victory, they used an outpost with a microwave transmitter to make the occupants enemy outpost sick, and in Gundam X, that's how the titular mech powered up it's main cannon.

>>14236830
No, what >>14236808 is describing is the Solar System where you use a massive array of mirrors to focus intense light an eat to destroy the target. The Colony Laser, aka Solar Ray, is where you take a colony and turn it into a giant cannon.

>>14236699
Mythbusters disproved it though

>>14237159
with a few hundred kids in atmosphere, not miles of perfectly aligned mirrors in a vacuum

>>14237159
>>14237164
So how bullshit is this report then
http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/deathray/10_ArchimedesResult.html

>>14237456
What's been known for almost 15 years that Myth Busters uses shoddy as fuck methodology for a lot of their experiments that doesn't cover all variables, but because of how they present it as easily digestible and the test is usually extremely visceral. The audience assumes the testing that was done was conclusive.

Anyone who really uses the scientific process is banging their head against the wall when they watch Myth Busters.

>>14237547
On the other hand, some stuff is cool like plane on a conveyor belt.

>>14237159

What they were doing was relatively low-scale by-comparison. Something the size of an armada would actually have the intended result thanks to sheer volume.