04-23-2016, 06:22 PM
Plans to avoid the issue of danger to passing aircraft and satellites would be made more complicated by the fact that the array would have to be steerable. If it wasn't, it would only be useful for a few seconds to minutes each day, when the rotation of the Earth happened to bring the probe swarm into the right direction.
Building it on the lunar farside would also do three more things; boost effective power (losses in Earth's atmosphere would otherwise be inevitable), avoid focusing and aiming issues caused by atmospheric refraction - and make the laser available as part of an asteroid deflection strategy. If this thing is finely enough focused and aimed to be useful for power transmission at interstellar distances, then it's certainly good enough in those respects to hit an asteroid.
Building it on the lunar farside would also do three more things; boost effective power (losses in Earth's atmosphere would otherwise be inevitable), avoid focusing and aiming issues caused by atmospheric refraction - and make the laser available as part of an asteroid deflection strategy. If this thing is finely enough focused and aimed to be useful for power transmission at interstellar distances, then it's certainly good enough in those respects to hit an asteroid.