this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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All fun and games until a piece of space junk knocks into the satellite and you accidentally cut through the Dutch sea wall.
I think this was one of the possible disasters that could happen in Sim City 2000
Bzzzt
There would absolutely have to be safety measures on this to avoid that exact scenario from occurring. I cannot remember the author of the book right offhand, but there's a book called PowerSat that goes through something very similar to this. As long as the beam is diffuse and not incredibly focused, it should be fine if something flies through it like a bird or if the beam gets knocked off course, it wouldn't damage infrastructure. There would also need to be good auto cut off functionality built into the thing so that if it realized it was off target, maybe by like a focusing laser or something, it would automatically shut itself down.
Or until sabotage happens, like with the baltic cables and pipes