Posting has been light, because I've been busy helping someone help Mike Griffin get us Back To The Moon, And Beyond, but I'll be heading over to the hotel tonight to schmooze with early arrivals at the conference. There should be quite a few, since the festivities start at 9 AM tomorrow.

I'll be getting in at 1:00 PM.

I'd love to know if current energy issues lead people to take the solar-power satellite concepts more seriously. The agenda shows a couple of speakers on the topic.
Laura

Laura: the current energy issues are about shortage of liquid fuel, not shortage of electricity. There's no imminent shortage of inputs for electricity generation. Additional capital investment is required to increase capacity, but that's true (to an even greater extent) of SPS as well.

(And don't talk about hydrogen. It's not going to be a practical transportation fuel soon, if ever.)

It seems like the ISS could do some experiments related to that. How much power is it capable of generating? Couldn't they shunt some of that power towards the ground for a power beaming experiment?
And why would it be outrageously expensive to do this? (I know it would be, before even knowing what it would cost)

ISS doesn't have appropriate antennas or transmitter for even a quick and dirty microwave beaming experiment, for one...

I'm not sure how much power they could spare, in any case. Those PV arrays are pretty much enough for ISS itself, and not much more. However, for assorted satellite/deep space communitations reasons (where signal attenuation can be even more critical than in brute-force power delivery), I would think there's signifigant data out there on what operating frequencies would be most effective, balanced against interference issues.