Use electricity to produce megatons of light to create hydrogen? Holy Freaking Einstein, people! Is the goal to lose as much electricity to inefficiencies at once?
When we were developing the Solar Concentrator for the Space Station, it used an offset parabolic reflector about 60 feet across to direct sunlight through an aperture to heat salts to store heat. It was not a perfect point of light (intentionally), but had a focal point about the size and shape of a football. As long as it tracked the sun and pointed to the collector, all was well. But if repairs needed to be made, for instance, the mirror had to be turned way from the sun, and brought back into focus later.
These maneuvers had to be calculated and the movement computer controlled to avoid the ‘football’ crossing any part of the structure to avoid damage. The program fell though and only the solar array (solar cells) was used. It was fun, though, we had it fully assembled, but not outdoors in the sunlight.
Dennis
Well, apparently the artificial lighting setup is just an experimental or testing rig. The actual intended use case is solar concentration. Because, yes, it would take a very special kind of physics to make that design work for power generation as instantiated. The kind of physics that doesn’t have laws of thermodynamics, specifically.
I was just reading Robert Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, today. It has the line by a defiant human, speaking to aliens who have threatened to take away our sun.
“Go ahead! We’ll make a star!”
Soooo… A 2020’s style death ray? 