Idea: achieve massive power provision by transmitting energy from a base station to the spacecraft using space lightning.
Transmitting power is not a new idea: lasers are the go-to example for this. Powering the craft with solar energy is another theoretical way of doing it.
My idea on the other hand is different. Imagine spooling a long wire behind the space ship and just transmit electricity to it the same way you transmit power to your hoover. Except instead of sending power up a wire, send it up as bolts of lighting through the ionised gas trail your ship is trailing behind it.
Unless you have two beams, it would have to AC. You'd have to keep the series capacitance low enough that a significant amount of power is conducted (which might kill it). Remember that free space impedance is 377ohms sqrt(mu0/eps0) so non-photonic power likes to become Lambertian radiation.
Transmitting power is not a new idea: lasers are the go-to example for this. Powering the craft with solar energy is another theoretical way of doing it.
My idea on the other hand is different. Imagine spooling a long wire behind the space ship and just transmit electricity to it the same way you transmit power to your hoover. Except instead of sending power up a wire, send it up as bolts of lighting through the ionised gas trail your ship is trailing behind it.