X-37b space plane’s microwave power beam experiment
What would it take to power an airliner?<p>Wireless power transmission would be ideal for a lot of applications, transportation (electric cars, planes, maybe trains, UAVs, boats) chief among them.<p>You could shave a lot of weight out of an electric plane by reducing its battery capacity to an emergency supply. This would also greatly reduce the carbon impact of flight transportation, while making a case for bootstraping a beamed power constellation and ecosystem.<p>I guess that's something Nikola Tesla first envisioned :)<p>Unfortunately, from what I know, microwaves are not really harmless, unless diffused over a large area, and you then need a large collector. An airliner could do, if big enough. I don't know either if a beam can be steered fast enough, and what would the economics behind be.