Speaker

June 28, 2022: Austin Fikes KM6INI: Space Solar Power: feasible or fantasy?

Collecting solar power in space and beaming it down to earth has been considered since Isaac Asimov's short story Reason published in 1941. This concept is called Space Solar Power and is a daunting technological challenge. Austin's talk will describe the Caltech Space Solar Power Project's motivations, system architecture, and prototypes. Join us to learn about the unique challenges of this ambitious project as well as novel concepts in power beaming and flexible, large-scale microwave phased arrays.

Austin Fikes (KM6INI) is currently a postdoc at Caltech. He recently received his PhD in EE at the Caltech Holistic Integrated Circuits Lab. He works in flexible and scalable microwave phased arrays.