(Remember, I gave you a chance to cut your losses!)
I am ashamed that you would look down onto the intellectual community from your high chair "mr. pertinent"
Why would you be ashamed, when my high chair has lasers too?

Pchoo pchoo! It cost seven hundred billion dollars to build and burns out in one tenth of a second of sustained use, but isn't it cool?
Anyway, I'm not going to argue the sand point anymore. It was simply a way of pointing out land exists on Earth that is pretty much useless otherwise. Besides, I'm obviously pretty ignorant about deserts, I've only been to Hawaii and it's mostly just a bunch of black rocks there.
Instead, please argue how investing hundreds of billions of dollars into a system that relies on giant space microwave lasers that have never been built or seriously tested in a lab, much less a vacuum which takes another tens of billions of dollars to get up into is 1. scientifically valid, 2. economically valid for the consumer and 3. economically valid for companies. And no, you can't argue that throwing money at the private sector to build this stuff will benefit the general public. And why this money shouldn't be spent on, again, nuclear reactors and research into fusion technology.
3) there is almost no need for protection, damage from space debris is rediculously few and far between, and any damage would be restricted to a few panels instead of degrading the whole complex (on hte very off chance something hits, keep in mind how many satellites we have up in space) why are we relatively protected from space debris? because Earth is a planet, and by definition it sweeps its orbit of all big large materials, in turn smaller materials either are swept in or are brought "with the flow" and then become relatively harmless
The Hubble's solar arrays were replaced TWICE in TWELVE YEARS. Each launch cost BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. What are you talking about?
there are a HUNDRED different articles on the topic, and they do address the downfalls, but THESE ENDS JUSTIFY THE PATHETICALLY CHEAP MEANS.
Yeah, there are thousands of different articles from astrophysicists and engineers detailing the fact that this is a sci-fi Star Wars idea based in no way on sustainability, economics, or reality itself, balanced with the expert opinion of MSNBC writers also covering the latest Britney Spears fiasco. It's a good thing your saying the scheme is pathetically cheap automatically makes it so, I was worried with the whole "government deficit and weakness of dollar due to subprime mortgage crisis" thing that three-quarters of a trillion dollars, whether public or private, might be relatively difficult to spare.
this isnt just some kid looking STARRY EYED INTO THE SKY.
You know, that gives me an idea. We should hook up kids to generators, then make them look at the sky all day. Stick a little rotating dealie in the floor and make them stand on it and we could rotate them to find the sun, moon, or the nearest light emitting ball of rock/gas in the sky. Hey, we could even implant solar panels in their retinas and shoot them into space for a measly ten billion dollars? Think of the children! The wonder-filled bionic children powering your lightbulbs!
gamma rays are hardly, if at all attenuated by the atmosphere, so less energy is lost than if the same output had to travel on wires
Yeah, I wasn't going to pick on this, but I can't resist. No, gamma rays are only attenuated by blocks of
pure lead. However, I can't really think of any way to:
1. send gamma rays down into the atmosphere as a directed current (gamma ray lasers don't exist)
2. absorb a gamma ray laser without having the atoms in the receiver go crazy
3. even produce gamma rays through solar energy. Maybe you're thinking of the quite related electromagnetic energy called "microwaves". And by quite related I mean they're on completely the other side of the EM spectrum from another, and a microwave's wavelength is millions of times larger than a gamma ray's.
Ooo! I know one way we could harness gamma rays here on earth though - through a NUCLEAR REACTOR or twenty. Who would have thought?
EDIT: A quick talk with one of my buddies made me realize something. Throwing wads of hundred dollar bills into a giant waste-to-energy incinerator will also create perhaps even more energy than this proposal. So let's get on that pretty soon too.
Here is the technical blueprint:


