The Solar Power Satellite (SPS), as proposed by Peter Glaser back in 1968, would be an extraterrestrial phenomenon. Located 22,3000 miles above the Earth’s surface, it would absorb the Sun’s rays, more powerful in space than on Earth, convert it to microwaves, and beam it down to Earth, providing 5 to 10 billion watts of electricity. This would be environmentally safe, non-polluting, and could replace natural gas, coal, and nuclear power as a reliable source of power, even make America energy independent.
Ben Bova’s book is about that. In the novel, an SPS has already been built, ready to be tested then put on the market. The plot is that there are oil companies, from both the U.S. and the Middle East, who sees this as a threat, and do everything they can to stop it, including sabotage, putting in moles, and planning on hijacking it and use it as a weapon to terrorize Washington, D.C., thus turning the public against this technology and insisting on sticking with oil, to the oil companies delight.
This is a combination science fiction and spy thriller, taking the status quo of the present world and creating a plot with all the characters including the farseeing industrialist and visionary (Dan Randolph), his beautiful secretary (April), a lost love who is now a U.S. Senator (Jane Thornton), the American oil baron (Wendell Garrison) who wants to stop our hero, allying himself with an Arab oil baron (Asim al-Bashir). We also have our share of terrorists, assassins, F.B.I. agents, and the Japanese industrialist who wants in on the SPS. All the recipes of a thriller, never mind the science fiction.
It’s a great plot, but bad science, and here is where the criticism comes in.
SPOILER ALERT - - - - - FROM THIS POINT, I WILL REVEAL THE ENDING
The story goes along like any spy thriller, reaching up to the climax, where the SPS is sabotaged (by a Russia, an Islamic radical, and a member of the Irish Republican Army), is pointed to Washington, DC, where over 1000 people are cooked like in a microwave oven, as the solar power satellite emits microwaves.
The culprits are caught, the Arabs are bombed, and the beautiful secretary is killed (I hate that), but the satellite is saved and is allowed to resume its original function.
Well, if that actually happened, there would be Hell to pay, starting with a ban on SPS systems. This book also misses the main point.
The science here is wrong, completely wrong. Yes, the SPS emits microwaves to a receiving antenna to convert to electricity, but it would not harm any living organism; not birds flying through it, and anyone in an airplane flying through the beams.
First of all, the beams are dispersed by the atmosphere, severely weakened by it. Second, the beams, although they give a receiving antenna enormous power, in the billions of watts, if that SPS was moved and focused on any city, the effect would only be 20% of the sun’s rays on a hot summer day. The sun itself would have more of an effect on a human being than an SPS. If one were to stand outside of a receiving antenna, it would be like standing next to a functioned microwave over in a kitchen (outside, not inside). Last, there could be a fail safe system where the receiving antenna would connect to the SPS by a laser, and if the SPS was moved, the laser would be broken and the SPS would automatically shut off. These are all proven facts, and you can google this for yourself, for I am not allowed to cite the sources here.
Sorry Mr. Bova, great thriller, but bad science. The plot would not work.
What I was expecting, and what would be a better plot would be if the SPS, after being hijacked and beamed at Washington, nothing would happen due to the above facts, and the culprits would be apprehended by the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., with a few fights, shootouts, and a few people killed, and the survivors questioned and made to feel like fools thinking that the SPS could ever be used as a weapon.
This would be a lot more realistic and conforming to science. Otherwise, it would be a fantasy.
Alastair Browne
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