lightning powered space stations

many an observer of nature has looked at the awesome power of lightning and asked how it could be possible to harness this power.

it turns out , that relative to existing conventional power sources--a hypothetical device that captured lightning in a perfect manner for energy production would still be useless because as powerful as lightning is due to its high voltage , it contains relatively low amounts of net energy for the purposes of making a comparatively useful and profitable alternative energy source.

even in a highly thunderstormy high lightning area, --- there simply isn't close to enough energy contained in the gross number of lightning strikes to provide a useful amount of energy relative to conventional commercial industrial sources.

now, as with many exotic energy sources, there is potential for it to be useful OUTSIDE of conventional applications---particularly in remote applications.

now, sattelites and space stations are highly remote applications. they are frequently powered with solar panels that have access to very high quality direct sunlight.

however, just as an experiment, it would be very interesting to see if it would be possible to harness VERTICAL lightning that occurs in thunderstorms and shoots upwards . these types of strikes, named sprites and elves, are a type of rapid and very FAR extending lightning.

the idea being, it would be possible for an orbiting station to direct these types of lightning to itself and harness them . how? with lasers of course.

lasers have been used and new iterations of more and more effective ones have been developed. what's more,a laser from a space stations shined downwards towards the high stratosphere attentuates quite slowly over the distance through the very thin atmosphere at that altitude.

so here's the question--why bother doing this if these orbiting facilities already have solar power sources.

1) these types of vertical lightning are particularly difficult to study , so the number one reason is for studying them 2) these types of lightning might also coincide with a burst of IONS and charged MOLECULES travelling straight up into space in the same direction as the discharge. is is possible that by directing the lightning the space station may be able to exploit a source of MASS and capture particles into a magnetic trap. this would be an unbelievably valueable source of mass in outerspace. the only other sources of mass readily available in orbit are the extremely diffuse plasma wind and space dust. also , concentrations of extremely hard to capture particles zipping around the radiation van allen belts, but those are nowhere near close to low earth orbit.

finding a source of diffuse, semi concentrated mass in low earth orbit that can be exploited could be very very valuable.

3) because it's cool.

4)for backup power or night time power supplement to m