zlacker

Makes me wonder:

Back in the early 1990s I read some children's futurist book that suggested that we might send solar panels to space that would then beam energy via microwaves to the surface. The book was more fantasy than science, so I took it with a huge grain of salt and appreciated it for its entertainment value.

But do you think schemes that try to direct solar energy to the surface are more practical then running datacenters in space?

>>gwbas1+(OP)
I don't think there is calculus that makes the cost of getting it to space worth putting it there - Elon of all people knows this - if you scale up the ground-based solar and add battery storage, the costs are still far lower than trying to put that in space to gain more hours of usable sun and higher intensity sun... it's just not cost effective until panels are paper thin, weigh nothing and the cost of launches and thus per-ton to orbit gets an order of magnitude cheaper.

>>gwbas1+(OP)
Space based power arrays with microwave transmission to massive ground fields has been discussed for nearly sixty years. It doesn't make economic sense, at all.

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/08/20/space-based-so...

I would love it to be a thing, but it is not a thing.