Hi All

SM that is such a HOT idea... haha... but why not suspend the lens via an annular solar-sail surrounding it and cancelling most of its gravity? Leave just enough weight for it to orbit the Sun at the same angular velocity as the Earth.

So close to the Sun the needed cancellation is almost total, so it'd be tricky. From a different orbit - say 0.1 AU - the needed cancellation is easier to stabilise, and the sail's thrust/weight ratio doesn't change. Everything is cooler too.

At 100 Suns PVs would perform better than at GEO, and multi-layer cells with ~ 75% efficiency would be feasible, so a Fresnel lens would be better deployed to focus a beam of a selected frequency for better conversion efficiency at the far end, maybe?

Personally I'd rather see a pellet stream to carry the power, magnetically deccelerated to draw off their power and diverted back to the near-Sun station for re-use. If out going velocity is ~ x5 the station's local escape velocity the gee-losses will be minor, and the mere 30 km/s dV for pellet return insignificant. I wonder what the conversion efficiency of linear motors is?

Adam